


source decay

by lagaudiere



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 09:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14566509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lagaudiere/pseuds/lagaudiere
Summary: A story about ten years, two people, the military-industrial complex, and three attempts to save the world.





	source decay

**Author's Note:**

> So, a few notes:
> 
> This is technically set in the same "universe" as my previous fic "all your art of war", but it's not really required reading (although that one is much shorter) if you just start from the premise that Mako isn't dead 
> 
> The name and some inspiration comes from the Mountain Goats song, of course 
> 
> Apologies for what is doubtless an incredible amount of pseudoscience and for the improbable assumption that things like "Twitter" and "the New York Times" will still exist in the 2030s 
> 
> This is by far the longest fic I've written and the most complex plot, so I hope it's an enjoyable read! I'm on tumblr @ spacesocialist -- thank you!

United Nations Security Council 2015 session, resolution 17  
  
The security council,  
  
Affirming the emergency nature of the kaiju crisis and unique dangers of cloning or potential biological weapons derived from organic kaiju material,  
  
Recognizing the unique ability of the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps (PPDC) in addressing the above challenges,  
  
Recognizing the necessity of amending international law to address these matters,  
  
Resolves to allow the PPDC the initial right of detention and interrogation for persons possessing organic kaiju materials  (including but not limited to blood, brain material, and cells) without the permission of the PPDC for an indefinite time period. Persons detained under this resolution shall be extradited to their country of citizenship for trial and sentencing at the discretion of the PPDC. International law standards regarding the treatment of prisoners shall not be considered to apply to these cases.  
  
Resolution passes with 14 affirmations and one abstention.

***  
_2025_

The Nobel Prize committee presents Drs. Hermann Gottlieb and Newton Geiszler with a special joint award, for “extraordinary achievements in the fields of physics and physiology,” at a one-time ceremony in Stockholm. They’ll be in Norway a week later for the presentation of the Peace Prize to everyone deemed responsible for closing the breach.    
  
“It’s kind of like the Nobel equivalent of an EGOT,” Newton says into his phone camera, in their limo on the way to the Stockholm ceremony. He’s always live-streaming things on one website or another now, to what he calls his adoring public. “Of course, I already had one Nobel. So that’s one more than Hermann here.”  
  
He swivels the camera around to point at him, and Hermann rolls his eyes at him.  
  
“I have two Fields Medals, thank you,” he says. “Merely because the Nobel committee has historically chosen not to recognize achievements in mathematics—“  
  
“Okay, okay,” Newton says, “I think that’s enough of Hermann’s thrilling commentary, we will check with you later tonight! I’m gonna make a great speech!” He clicks off whatever website he’s using and shakes his head at Hermann with a grin.  
  
He can’t suppress a surge of horrible fondness for Newton, who has dressed for the ceremony in a slightly ill-fitting, bright blue suit and a tie Hermann had to straighten for him in the lobby of their hotel. He’s gelled his hair into submission and his eyes glint with nearly manic energy. He looks — well. He looks good.

This is a train of thought that has been shifted to the forefront of Hermann’s mind by their experiment in drifting with a kaiju mind and with each other. Neither of them have spoken it aloud, but he knows they both felt it, this unexpectedly powerful _thing_ that would probably change everything if they were to actually articulate it.

Hermann has probably known for years how he feels about Newton, though he can’t imagine a method of torture that would have been sophisticated enough to drag it out of him. The fact was that Newton was, whatever else he might be, the only person Hermann knew who he didn’t eventually find terminally boring. And there was something similar in Newton’s mind, so poorly buried in his subconscious it was hardly hidden at all.

But unconscious emotion does not equal conscious desire, Hermann reminds himself, and so neither of them have spoken about it.

The ceremony is, frankly, embarrassing. People stare at them the entire evening, and Hermann doesn’t think he will ever get used to being stared at, or have any association with the experience which isn’t negative.

There are also a number of flattering speeches by former coworkers of theirs who quit the PPDC years ago and had nothing good to say about them at the time; Hermann distinctly remembers one of them screaming at Newton that he was an insufferable lunatic while storming out. Which was fair, but you could at least be honest about it now.

When they’re called to the stage, Newton gives the crowd a flourishing bow immediately and offers Hermann his arm. Surprised, but not displeased, Hermann takes it.

“Rock stars,” Newton says under his breath as they walk towards the front of the room towards the presenters. “You and me, man, I told you we would be.”

They’re presented with their medals, and it doesn’t feel any heavier than a Fields Medal. They are small symbols of recognition; like everything that has been offered since the breach closure, they seem to be stand-ins for a level of gratitude and formality modern society is not set up to present.

Newton immediately bounds towards the podium, pulling Hermann with him. He nods at the microphone, but Hermann shakes his head. Better to let him say his part and get it over with.

“Okay,” Newton says, smiling a bemused smile at the audience. “Okay, hi. Well, first of all I can’t even _begin_ to say what an honor this is. I mean, when the Nobel committee breaks tradition for you, you gotta figure you’ve done something right.”

He pauses for a chorus of polite laughter.

“But, anyway, I wanna thank everyone out there who believed in us, which is, uh, I think just my dad and a couple of my old grad students. More importantly, of course I want to thank everyone who gave their lives in the effort to close the breach. They’re the reason we’re here today and we can’t ever forget about that. See, certain people may have called me a kaiju groupie in the past but, uh, the beauty of the kaiju is the beauty of humanity’s ability to look at even something that big, that powerful, and say, ‘We’re gonna win this one.’”

He and pauses and turns his head from their audience to look at Hermann, a soft, strange look in his eyes. And Hermann feels an echo of his emotions, not so strong as in the drift itself, but clear and bright and warm. He can feel how intensely Newton experiences it, so much it almost hurts.

Hermann wouldn’t want to venture a guess at what name Newton would give that emotion. But he knows what it means to him.

“And I want to thank Dr. Hermann Gottlieb,” Newton says. “For not murdering me in all the years we shared a lab, and, uh. For staying.”

There’s a burst of applause at that, and Newton inclines his head, offering Hermann the microphone again.

Everything that Hermann wanted to say has fled from his mind entirely.

“Ah,” he says. “I believe Dr. Geiszler said it extremely well.”

Newton loops an arm around his shoulder and pulls him close, raising his Nobel medal triumphantly above his head.

At the end of the night, after all the congratulations and afterparties, it happens like this: Newton more or less follows him back to his hotel room. He’s brandishing a bottle of champagne which he stole earlier in the evening from Elon Musk. “Hey,” he says, leaning against the wall as Hermann opens the door to his room. “Nightcap?”

“Oh, alright then.” Hermann throws the door open and Newton practically skips after him.

“There must be cups in here, right? Plastic cups? I mean, we could always drink straight from the bottle, but I wanted to, uh—“

Hermann grasps him by the shoulder and Newt spins around to look at him. “—Toast,” he finishes.

The energy that’s bouncing around his brain, and consequently around Hermann’s, is nervous, not excited. “Newton,” he says. “What is it?”

“I just…” Newton shrinks away slightly from his hand, and then appears to give up. “You feel it too, don’t you, the drift bleed? Right? Because sometimes I think I’m just imagining it, and it’s just me, but…”

Hermann’s heart thuds painfully in his chest. Or maybe Newton’s does. “No,” he says. “No,” he says. “You might’ve mentioned it a little earlier, but it is not just you.”

Newton grins and sets the champagne bottle down on the nearest dresser, earlier task apparently forgotten. “Yeah, well, you could’ve mentioned it earlier too,” he says, running a hand through his now-untidy hair.

“I was fully aware we were both experiencing the side effects of—“ Hermann starts, and Newton kisses him.

It’s not an ideal kiss—Newton’s glasses stab him a little in the cheek, and they’re both clearly very out of practice, and Hermann is caught off guard enough that he’s unsteady on his feet, falls forward a little and has to grab onto the edge of the dresser.

It’s good, though. It’s incredibly good.

“Oh,” Hermann says when they break apart. The drift connection is almost a physical warmth when they’re this close together, and Hermann thinks fleetingly that it was all worth it to feel this way.

“Rad,” Newton says, eyes wide and face flushed.

“ _Rad_?” Hermann can’t stop himself from saying. “Newton, really.”

Newton laughs. “Dude, if we’re going to do this, you _have_ to start calling me Newt,” he says, and rather than argue Hermann kisses him again.

  
***  
Newt is bleeding and bruised on the other side of the two-way mirror, unmoving in the restraints he’s been placed in, staring expressionless into the middle distance.  
  
It takes Hermann substantial mental effort to remain on his feet.  
  
He’s standing between Mako Mori and Jake Pentecost, who both regard him with something between pity and suspicion.

“Isn’t anyone going to get him some medical treatment?” Hermann says. His voice is harsh, and he can tell neither of them were expecting it. 

  
“Uh—“ Jake looks cautiously at Mako. The two of them were both injured in the fight against the monstrosity Newt (no, Hermann reminds himself, not Newt, the precursors) created, but their wounds have been bandaged. Newt is still bleeding freely from his forehead. Hermann suspects Nathan Lambert was unnecessarily harsh when he dragged him back to the shatterdome.  
  
“You’re right,” Mako says. “I suppose we were overwhelmed, but we — I’ll have someone look at it.”  
  
With a quick nod of her head to him, Mako turns and walks quickly down the hallway, hands clasped in military posture behind her back.  
  
“He’s not speaking to you at all, is he?” Hermann asks Jake, still looking through the glass at Newt’s glassy stare.  
  
“No,” Jake says. “It’s all them. They keep referring to themselves in the plural, so. It’s pretty easy to tell.”

“He’s still there,” Hermann says, more to himself than anything. No matter how strange, how fundamentally different he was before, he wasn’t like this. He was in some fractional way still himself.

And he’d tried to resist, hadn’t he? That had to count for something.

  
Hermann makes himself pull his eyes away and look at Jake. “Would you let me talk to him?” he says. “Your sister must have told you, we... we had an exceptionally strong mental connection, a high level of drift bleed. If he would speak with anyone, I... I could try,” he finishes softly.  
  
Jake’s eyes are still pitying. Hermann is all too used to pity; he’s always hated that.  
  
“Mako says we have to wait until a new marshal’s appointed and the council can get together a quorum,” Jake says.  
  
Bureaucracy. It’s always damnable, inhumane bureaucracy.  
  
“Ranger Pentecost,” Hermann says, “are they going to kill him?”  
  
Jake flinches. “What? No — no one’s suggesting that. Mako wouldn’t let that happen, man — uh, Dr. Gottlieb.”  
  
“Right.” Hermann grips the top of his cane tightly, still trying to steady himself. On the other side of the glass, the thing possessing Newt’s body runs a finger along the cut on his forehead and looks with mild interest at his blood. “Right. I’ll see to it that she doesn’t.”

***

_2026_

Ghost drifting as a phenomenon is the kind of thing that the PPDC is extremely interested in studying now that it has a budget that allows for hiring psychologists.

Apart from any scientific interest in the drift, Hermann knows that he and Newt are being _monitored_. He can’t blame the corps for this — no one else has ever drifted with a kaiju, and no one knows what the long term side effects will be, though fortunately right now they’re limited to occasional bad dreams.

No amount of legitimacy, though, prevents the appointments with the psychologist from being extremely tedious.

“How are you managing the side effects?” Dr. Bryant asks him, pen poised over her clipboard in blatant excitement. “Any significant distress?”  

Hermann has told Dr. Bryant every detail of change in his life that could be attributed to effects of the drift. He considers these to fall into three major categories. First, there’s the relatively trivial, which range from an increased interest in evolutionary biology to a sudden ability to tolerate death metal. Secondly there are effects that could be either drift bleed or simple side effects of increased intimacy — a general ability to anticipate Newt’s next words and to communicate with him through gesture and facial expression. Thirdly and most strangely is the transfer of symptoms.

This has gone both ways, and is certainly more unusual than the rest of it, less attributable than anything else to simple proximity.

Newt has started wincing in sympathetic pain when Hermann’s pain flares up particularly badly. But he’s also started doing things that are completely uncharacteristic of Newt; straightening his pencils so the erasers line up, reading to the ends of books that infuriate him, scrupulously avoiding foods touching one another on his plate. Meanwhile, Hermann has these unpredictable surges of energy, more restlessness and trouble sleeping, more frenetic and racing thoughts than before.

“No,” he says. “I wouldn’t regard it as a problem.”

So their patterns of thinking are slightly disordered in slightly different ways than before. Hermann doesn’t consider this a _bad_ thing, exactly. It’s a balancing act, and he thinks the drift has also skimmed some of the sharper edges off them both, made them less extreme.

Dr. Bryant’s look is piercing. “It’s difficult to know what to think of as healthy in your circumstances,” she says. “Most people who drift have passed the PPDC’s mental health requirements, and—“

“Yes, yes, I know,” Hermann says impatiently. “You all find us very strange and worrying. I appreciate the scientific interest, doctor, but certainly if we have experienced no real ill effects, there is no problem.”

Dr. Bryant sighs very quietly. “It doesn’t seem like it’s affected your job performance at all, true,” she says.

This is always the foremost concern. “Hmm,” Hermann replies noncommittally.

“And what about the kaiju?” Dr. Bryan says. “You’re not feeling any ghost drift symptoms from that?”

Hermann shrugs. “No. Bad dreams, occasionally, from their point of view, but I assume those are only memories.”

He can see her eyes widen. “Does that concern you at all?”

Behind her, the minute hand of the clock makes its final rotation over to five o’clock.

“Ah, would you look at that,” Hermann says drily. “It appears our time is up.”

It’s a short drive from PPDC headquarters back to their apartment, which is by design. The new lab has been established in Los Angeles, a cornerstone of the efforts to rebuild the city. Hermann doubts he will ever consider himself a Los Angeles person, but he’s adjusting relatively well, all things considered.

He and Newt had tried living separately for a few months, but it quickly began to seem ridiculous, considering they spent most of their time together anyway. “I mean, we were basically living together for six years and _not_ having sex,” Newt had said. “Don’t see why we should go backwards now.”

One of the entirely predictable side effects of this is the fact that Hermann can smell something burning as soon as he steps into the apartment.

“Newton!”

From Newt’s office, there’s the familiar sound of a laptop falling to the ground, then a muffled curse word and a bright “Hi, Hermann!”

Newt manages to rush past him and get to their small, cramped kitchen before Hermann can and turn off the stove burner. He gazes at the charred remains of what appears to be an attempt at making pancakes, which is unexpected — Hermann wouldn’t have been surprised to find kaiju eyeballs in the microwave, but he’s never seen Newt attempt to actually cook before. Nothing more advanced than ramen noodles, anyway.

“Ah, shit,” Newt says sorrowfully.

Hermann can’t help but laugh. “What were you attempting to do here, exactly?”

“I was going to make those blintz things you like!” Newt says indignantly, brandishing the pan at an array of ingredients piled up untidily on the counter. “But I got my test results back about the kaiju blue levels in my ocean water samples and I, uh, forgot.”

He looks sheepish again and starts attempting to scrape the burnt remains off the pan with a spatula.

“You were trying to make blintz?” Hermann says, blinking at him.

“Well, _yeah._ I remembered ‘em from the drift — well, I remembered a bunch of German food but this seemed like the easiest to make and it didn’t, like, have blood in it. And we’ve lived here for three months so I thought it’d be good if we stopped ordering Chinese food _every_ night.”

Newt gives up on the pan, shrugs, and tosses the entire thing into the trash.

“It would certainly be preferable to burning down the building,” Hermann says, and then, “you saw that in the drift? I haven’t thought about those for years.”

He remembers those mornings in Germany, of course, sitting around the kitchen table with his sisters and his parents, the mornings when his father would read the newspaper aloud to them all and they’d be allowed a rare conversation over a meal that wasn’t about marks in school.

“Well, I remember it,” Newt says. “And now your parents are never gonna think I’m a nice Jewish boy who cooks just like your mother.”

“Oh, Newton, you were already hopeless.” Newt left the print-out of his recipe on the counter, and Hermann picks it up and puts on his glasses. “Do we have everything we need for another attempt? It’s really not difficult if you just do it correctly, dear, it’s just basic chemistry.”

Newt grins at him, and Hermann sees the egg yolk smeared on his glasses and light dusting of flour on his shirt. It shouldn’t be endearing, he should want to scold Newt for being so irresponsible and wasteful, but he doesn’t. It‘s the sort of thing Dr. Bryant would attribute to the drift, he thinks, but Hermann isn’t sure that’s true. And even if it is, honestly, that doesn’t feel like such a bad thing.

“ _Dear_ ,” Newt scoffs, smiling even more brightly. “Careful, Dr. Gottlieb, if anyone else hears that they might start to think you _like_ me.”

Hermann rolls his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous, Newton,” he says, and rolls up his sleeves.

Their joint attempt at cooking is much more successful than Newt’s solo effort, and they make it a bit of a breakfast-for-dinner occasion, toasting to nothing in particular with Newt’s slightly too-strong mimosas.

“By the way,” Newt says around a mouthful of food a little while later, “did you tell Bryant I can’t make it to my next appointment?”

Hermann frowns at him. “Yes,” he says, “but you can’t keep avoiding these things merely because they’re uncomfortable.”

“It’s not that! It’s just that they think we’re…” Newt gestures broadly with a fork, searching for the right word, “ _pathological_. The drift bleed’s not a bad thing! Think of how much we could get done, if they let us do it more often, with our intelligence combined.”

It is strange, Hermann has to admit, to think of never doing it again. The connection is already weaker than it was at first, even as he’s grown more than a little fond of sharing his thoughts with someone else.

“I’ve already got quite enough of your thoughts in my head,” he says, but Newt just _winks_ at him.

“You can’t get away with that, babe.” He leans across the table, tapping Hermann gently on the forehead. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  
***  
The _New York Times_ : February 24, 2035  
  
Former colleague says Newton Geiszler was influenced by kaiju hivemind during Tokyo attack  
  
Two weeks after the revelation that the acclaimed biologist Newton Geiszler was behind the Tokyo, Japan, kaiju appearance which resulted in at least 132 fatalities, Mr. Geiszler’s former colleague has claimed he was not responsible for his actions during the attack.  
  
Hermann Gottlieb, who worked with Mr. Geiszler in the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps’ (PPDC) kaiju science division for fourteen years, said in a statement to the press that Mr. Geiszler’s neural link with a kaiju brain was the cause of his role in the attack.  
  
“Dr. Geiszler is one of the century’s most important scientific minds and a man who has dedicated his life to the protection and preservation of humanity,” Mr. Gottlieb said. “At no point while planning or carrying out the Tokyo attack did he act of his own free will.”  
  
Mr. Gottlieb said the PPDC, at which he remains a civilian employee, is setting a dangerous human rights precedent by avoiding public statements about Mr. Geiszler’s potential criminal responsibility.  
  
“The world deserves to know what happened during the attack, and that Dr. Geiszler is a victim, not a perpetrator, of these tragic circumstances,” Mr. Gottlieb said.  
  
***  
Mako sighs as she surveys the newspapers spread out in front of them. There are nearly a dozen of them all carrying headlines about Hermann’s public statement on the front page. He peers at her over the top of his glasses, unrepentant.  
  
“You know this is unacceptable,” she says.  
  
Hermann nods dispassionately. “Yes.”  
  
“You know this is grounds for immediate separation from the PPDC.”  
  
“Yes. But I have to admit I would be surprised if you pursue that option.”  
  
She looks at him pleadingly. “You don’t have to do this,” she says. “We are doing everything we can.”  
  
Hermann has been doing everything he can as well. He has a notebook full of scrawled notes on neurology, on the physical component of the drift and the psychological implications of ghost drifting, on the practical considerations of imposing one’s will on another through mental connection. He hasn’t been sleeping much. Meanwhile, the shatterdome has been crawling with interrogation experts who somehow believe their expertise in human emotional manipulation have some relevance to the situation.  
  
“You are pursuing a completely futile line of questioning with that thing,” he says. “Meanwhile, if you were willing to make even an attempt to communicate with Newt, he might have invaluable intelligence. He would certainly be more willing to disclose it.”  
  
Mako thinks she is doing a convincing effort of dispassion and disinterest, but Hermann is too familiar with the imitation to be fooled. “The council believes it is too risky. He may have no memory of the events at all.”  
  
“Damn the council,” Hermann says fervently. “I spoke to him, he tried to stop himself. He was aware, he was still there. Regardless of anything else, he is a human being, Mako. Who are we if we treat that as an irrelevant consideration?”  
  
The military side of the PPDC has big ideas about ensuring that this never happens again. They are convinced there must be a permanent way to seal off all connection to the multiverse, to prevent the faintest possibility of a recurrence. There are not interested in hearing from Hermann unless it’s on the subject of how he would do this, and he doesn’t even believe it’s possible.  
  
“Is there anything I could say to prevent you from disrupting our efforts?” Mako says. “Anything at all?”  
  
Hermann’s fingers tighten reflexively around his notebook. “Would you ever give up if it were you?” he asks. It’s not really a question. “If it were Raleigh, or Jake, could you accept that? Abandon to total annihilation a mind that you know as well as your own?”  
  
She shakes her head, not so much a “no” as an expression of despair. “They’ll understand that it isn’t working eventually,” she says. “Eventually, they’ll let you speak with him.”    
  
“I’m not going anywhere,” Hermann says, “until they do.”

 

***

_2027_

“Are those _kaijus_?” Hermann’s six-year-old niece asks with great interest.

Instinctively, Hermann whirls around and nearly knocks the tray of drinks his oldest brother is holding out of his hands. Newt’s tattoos are _barely_ visible — his sleeve had clearly slipped down just a little and Liesel had known immediately what she was looking at, which is a terrible sign.

“Opa said you have tattoos of kaijus,” Liesel says conspiratorially. “But we’re not supposed to talk about it.”

Her grandfather, Hermann’s father, is thankfully not in the room, having retreated from the room almost immediately after Passover Seder to take an alleged important telephone call. But Hermann’s mother fixes her sharp eyes on Liesel and Newt, as does everyone else in the room; Hermann could swear even Bastien’s six-month-old baby turns his head to look at them.

Hermann hasn’t been to see his family for Passover or any other holiday for years, but his younger sister had talked him into it when she’d come to visit in Los Angeles, and of course Newt had wanted to come.

There were many reasons why this was a bad idea, so there was a lot of coaching involved. Newt’s practice of Judaism growing up was considerably more lax than the Gottliebs’, and Hermann had made him memorize the Passover recitations in Hebrew back to front. He’d also made him promise not to try to cook anything, to cover up his tattoos, and to memorize the list of things the family did not talk about.

“Alright, I’ve got it,” Newt had said on the plane over. “Dietrich’s married to Ada and their kids’ names are Liesel and Heidi and I’m not allowed to mention that he flunked out of the jaeger pilot academy because he was so bad at drifting. Bastien’s married to Pietra and their kid’s name is Mario and I’m not allowed to mention that they named a baby Mario in 2027. And Karla’s the youngest and I’m not supposed to mention her job because your parents think being a lawyer is basically the same as dropping out of high school.”

“That’s correct,” Hermann had said. “And what should you say to my father?”

“As little as possible?” Newt ventured.

“As little as possible.”

Of course, the other thing the Gottlieb family did not talk about was Newton Geiszler, and saying as little as possible did not spare him from the full range of Lars Gottlieb glares.

Confronted by Liesel’s questioning, Newt freezes.

“Uh, yeah, I have some tattoos of kaiju,” he says cautiously. “Do you remember those?”

Liesel shakes her head. “Mama says Uncle Hermann and his friends made it so the kaijus can’t come to our world anymore. But why do you have them on your arms if they hurt people?”

Hermann’s mother purses her lips, and Ada pipes up, “Liesel, why don’t you leave Mr. Newt alone?”

“It’s okay!” Newt says hastily. “It’s just — a lot of people helped make sure there wouldn’t be any more kaiju, and I was one of them. So when we were fighting them I got these, so I’d always have a reminder of what we had to beat.”

Liesel thinks this over. “It’s kind of like Passover!” she says. “It’s a celebration of freedom.” This last is clearly a recitation she’s learned from her parents, and Newt looks relieved.

“Uh, kind of?” he says. “I guess?”

Contented, Liesel returns to coloring in a cat on her mother’s iPad and the noise in the room returns to the hum of people having several conversations at once.

Newt slinks back over to Hermann with a vaguely guilty look just as as Hermann’s father reenters the room. He sits down next to his wife and looks right at the two of them with narrowed eyes. Hermann can scarcely tell his own nervousness apart from Newt’s.

“So, Dr. Geiszler,” he says, “we haven’t had a chance to talk much about your work. What is it, exactly, about the kaiju that you find so fascinating?”

Karla hands Hermann another glass of wine, and he nods gratefully at her.

“ _Well_ , I mostly got into it because it was, you know, necessary,” Newt says. “I had a couple advanced degrees in biology, I was trying to decide what to do next, and then the attacks started. I figured you gotta understand your enemy to beat it, right?”

“Mr. Newt helped stop the kaijus!” pipes up Liesel, who is too young to understand that this is a sore spot for her grandfather, but the rest of the Gottliebs exchange a series of uncomfortable looks.

“Yes,” Lars says, lips pursed tightly together.

“So I started writing to Hermann about it,” Newt continues brightly. “Next thing you know, I get a job offer from the PPDC and I’m the world's leading xenobiology expert or something.” He smiles uncomfortably and straightens his tie.

“And you’ve continued in the field now that the war is over,” Lars says, blandly. “I could hardly render judgement, but one imagines there might be matters of human biology that are slightly more pressing. Cancer research, perhaps?”

Hermann cuts in before Newt can even open his mouth to reply. “Newton’s work studying the kaiju equivalent of the telomere may have some implications for cancer treatment, actually. I’m sure you’ve seen his article about it, I sent it to you last month.”

Lars and Lana exchange what can only be described as a commiserating look. “Hmm,” Lars says, and only a quick glance and shake of his head from Newt prevents Hermann from asking what exactly his father’s recent work has done for humanity as a whole.

Karla saunters over to the nearest chair and throws herself into it with her legs slung over the side, which was strictly forbidden in their childhood and earns her a sharp glare from their mother.

“So,” Karla says, waving her glass at Newt and Hermann, “when are you two going to start having kids?”

“ _Karla_!” Hermann, Dietrich, and Bastien all say together, and Newt starts coughing wildly.

“Sorry!” he says, clapping a hand to his mouth, and Hermann, who can tell he’s trying not to laugh, elbows him sharply in the ribs. “Sorry, oh no, I think I’m choking.”

Hermann attempts to convey through telepathy that he hopes Newt does choke. He’s not sure it works.

Karla rolls her eyes. “What? Everyone asks me that all the time, and I don’t have a man I’ve been living with for, what, two years?”

“I guess it depends how you count,” Newt says. He’s desperately trying to keep a straight face.

Under the unhappy eyes of four separate Drs. Gottlieb, Hermann forces a smile.

“Do you want to see his room upstairs?” Karla’s eyes light up. “I can show you all the pictures of little Hermann!”

Newt’s eyes go wide with delight. Hermann is going to have _words_ with him after this, he decides. He might also book a separate hotel room, possibly in a different city.

“Let’s go,” Karla says decisively. “Come along, Hermann.”

Hermann looks around at the rest of his family and decides there are worse things than allowing Karla to embarrass him. He follows them upstairs.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Newt says in a whisper as soon they make it upstairs. “What _was_ that? Are they always like that? It was like they were trying to melt me with their eyeballs!”

“They’re always like that,” Hermann says. “Didn’t you see it in the drift?”

“Well, _yeah,_ but it was so much scarier in person.”

Karla smiles. “Now you see why Hermann’s like this,” she says. “I’m lucky I’m ten years younger. Most of time they forgot they had me.”

Leading the way down the hallway, she gestures at the closed door of what was once Hermann’s childhood bedroom. He hasn’t lived here full-time since he was eleven and was accepted to Cambridge, and has hardly spent any time at home since he was seventeen, but the Gottlieb residence is large enough that he suspects its contents will be mostly untouched. Which is mortifying.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” she says. “I have the feeling you could use a moment.” She waves and strolls back down the hall towards her own childhood room.

“Thanks!” Newt calls after her. “You’re my favorite!”

Hermann glares at him. “You’re insufferable,” he says. “You’re almost as bad as all the rest of them. Including Karla.”

Newt’s face falls a little bit. “Can we talk?” he says, pulling open the door to Hermann’s room. “Like, seriously for a minute.”

Reluctantly, Hermann follows him. He can feel Newt’s palpable excitement as soon as they walk in as he takes in the surroundings. Hermann never had a great deal of personal possessions, but the walls of his room are covered in paper: star charts, Star Trek posters, equations he’d written out himself and pinned up to inspire himself. There are piles of books stacked up neatly and alphabetically by genre.

It’s a bit of an instant trip back in time: this room had been Hermann’s refuge as a child who was deeply unpopular with his peers and whose parents and older brothers had little time for him. He can almost see his own younger self reading _A Wrinkle In Time_ under the covers by flashlight, convincing himself that being a scientist could also mean being an adventurer.

He hasn’t had much use for science fiction since the first kaiju attack. It all seemed like the fantasy of a humanity that was still painfully naive.

“Okay,” Newt says, “ _so_ much to talk about here, but I just wanna ask, why do your parents hate me so much? ‘Cause if it’s about the gay thing I will totally fight your dad, if you want me to.”

Hermann sighs and sits down on the edge of his bed. He thinks he’s becoming a bit of a pushover, because Newt saying that dissipates a significant amount of his annoyance. “It’s not about that,” he says. “At least, I don’t think it is. It’s not as though I’ve ever — spoken to them about it, but as far as I can tell they resent you for the same reason they resent me. We were right about the breach and the jaeger program and my father was wrong.”

“He really hates being wrong, huh?”

“That he does. Particularly if the person proving him wrong is his son.”

Newt sits down next to him and takes his hand, running his thumb slowly over Hermann’s knuckles. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I know it doesn’t help, but at least you’re a way better person.”

Hermann smiles and leans into Newt’s shoulder. After a moment of comfortable silence, he says, “Alright, you can make fun of my childhood taste now.”

Newt’s excitement instantly rebounds. “Are you kidding? This is so cute.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“No, I mean it!” Newt grins at him in a very particular way that makes Hermann flush slightly. “I should have known you were a TOS fan. You are _such_ a Spock.”

Hermann rolls his eyes. “Oh, what an original observation, Newton.”

Newt smirks. “Well, you did have a bowl cut when I met you.” He twists around to run a hand through Hermann’s hair, now slightly longer and very slightly more stylish. “But I mean, you act all logical and emotionally repressed, but I know about all your secret feelings. Your secret, passionate feelings.”

He brushes his fingers down Hermann’s jawline and along his lips, which is really hardly anything, but there’s something about the location — his parents’ house, his childhood bedroom — that makes Hermann’s face heat up to the tips of his ears. “Did you spend a lot of time thinking about Spock’s passionate feelings?” he says, trying to be scathing.

“Mainly the Zachary Quinto version.” Newt slides his hand down Hermann’s side and under his layers of clothing, pressing it to bare skin. He leans forward to kiss him, and Hermann doesn’t protest.

The version of himself who lives here could hardly have imagined Newt. But if he had, knobby-kneed, nervous, lonely child that he was, it probably would have knocked his world off its axis.

A moment later, Newt breaks away with an expression of glee. “Wait a sec, am I your Captain Kirk? I’m totally the Captain Kirk of this relationship!”

Hermann groans. “I can’t imagine what Star Trek character I would compare you to. Perhaps Wesley Crusher, he was widely disliked.”

But Newt is still smiling at him with knowing eyes and the fainter but still compelling drift connection they still share is drawing him in, terribly persuasive.

Hermann stands up and pulls Newt with him by the sleeve. “Come on,” he says. “We’re going back to our hotel room where my family can’t disturb us and there aren’t any posters for you to look at.”

“Yessir. Mr. Sulu, you have the con,” Newt says.

In an act of enormous magnanimity, Hermann only gives him the silent treatment for this for thirty minutes.

“I think we would be good parents, by the way,” Newt says later, on the plane back to Los Angeles. “And if anyone says we wouldn’t, that’s discrimination.”

“No we wouldn’t, and it isn’t.”

“Okay, maybe we wouldn’t. But we’d be better at it than yours.”

“...Possibly.”

***

Emails between Dr. Newton Geiszler and Dr. Hermann Gottlieb (circa 2014)

Subject: PPDC

Hey Hermann,

I’m sure you already know this, but they’re sending out offer letters for the new Pan-Pacific Defense Corps. Rumor has it that it’s all gonna be based on your new tech, and I was hoping to get a confirmation straight from the source. I don’t know if you happened to put in a good word for me, or if they’re just looking for anyone who calls themself a xenobiologist on Twitter, but I’m thinking about taking it. I’m not exactly one for quasi-military organizations — not really a “joiner” — but the way things are going this’ll be the only way I can get my hands on kaiju samples.

Running to humanity’s aid definitely feels like the right thing to do, so I don’t know why I’m hesitating. Guess it’d be nice to hear you say that you think it’ll be a good thing, though, like for the world?

Let me know. And if I do take it, maybe suggest to the military higher-ups that we’d be a good research team? I know, I know, you can’t stand any science involving dead things, but we’re gonna have to get interdisciplinary at some point to beat this thing. And I mean beat it, not just punch it with robot fists. Plus it’ll be cool to finally see you in person.

—Newt

 

Subject: Re: PPDC

Also, is the neural drift technology actually up and running? Ppl in the neuroscience lab here are still saying it’s impossible. Send me a video clip so I can settle this bet if you got ‘em.

—N

 

Subject: Re: Re: PPDC

Newton,

As I always say, it is my father’s technology, only parts of the programming are mine. And I can assure you that the neural drift technology does work. I do not have video clips to send you, but i have seen it myself and it is truly compelling, a testament to the human spirit that I believe will give us a genuine fighting chance.

I did mention to some of the PPDC’s leadership team that you would be an ideal recruit, but they assured me they had already contacted you. I urge you to accept as soon as possible. War is always distasteful, but this is an opportunity for humanity to unite against a common enemy. And regardless, your skills are needed; you have a duty to the world.

For the time being, I will remain at the London laboratory perfecting the jaeger models, but once they are completed I believe I will be taking over the physics division, studying the breach. I’m sure there will be overlap in our areas of expertise, and look forward to potentially meeting in the flesh.

—Hermann

***

The PPDC sends them a new marshal. Somehow, Hermann hadn’t been expecting that, had thought power would fall entirely into the hands of Mako and their other ragtag survivors. But the council has managed to scare someone up to deal with what they refer to, in the memo, as a “severe crisis situation.”

James Warren is, God help them all, an American general. From the minute he assembles what’s left of the corps in Quan’s old meeting room and looks over them with coldly judgmental blue eyes, Hermann instantly distrusts him.

“The way I see it, this outfit’s got two priorities,” Warren says. “First, building the PPDC back up to operating capacity. Second, figuring out a way to prevent the kaijus from opening any more breaches. Now, we know how our enemy is, and that makes us better off than most armies. We‘ve just gotta figure out how to fight it.”

Warren is the sort of person who Newt would call a fascist on sight. Hermann tries to exchange a look with Mako, but she’s looking straight ahead with focused intensity. On her other side, Jake catches his eye and raises an eyebrow in a gesture that’s more confused than skeptical.

“Dr. Gottlieb,” Warren says, startling him. “Report on the status of the k-science program, please.”

“Ah.” Hermann fumbles with his notes for a moment. “No progress towards contacting the precursors, sir, and if I may, I believe we should refocus our efforts on—“

“The breach,” Warren says, as if he’s agreeing with him. “Or making sure there isn’t any breach to speak of. Now I’m not a scientist, but I know opening a breach requires kinetic energy. That’s the problem we need to solve.”

“The problem of kinetic energy?” Hermann can’t stop himself from saying.

When the PPDC employed a full team of scientists, nearly twenty years ago now, their staff geologist had more than once had to explain to military leadership that it was not possible or advisable to stop plate tectonics. Warren’s glare reminds Hermann of those conversations.

“The problem of how to prevent the precursors from accessing it, Dr. Gottlieb,” he says. “You should devote your full attention to that problem.”

“Uh—sir?” Jake’s voice pipes up with an edge of irritation. “What are we supposed to do about Dr. Geiszler?”

Warren actually _shrugs._ “Hold onto him. He’ll talk eventually.”

He goes on to lay out his plans for the engineering and combat units, but Hermann hardly hears it.

After the briefing, he strides through the door as quickly as possible. It doesn’t take Mako and Jake more than a few seconds to catch up with him, though. They walk silently shoulder-to-shoulder until they turn into a side corridor where no one else follows.

“Secretary General,” Hermann starts to say, “I feel obligated to say that these orders are simply unacceptable, and I—“

Mako holds up a hand. “Understood,” she says. “You know I don’t have the backing of the council.”

Hermann nods, chewing nervously at his lip. “Yes.”

“But,” Mako says, “I do have the keys.”  

***

 _Jacobin_ magazine: February 26, 2035

Kaiju disaster capitalism

In the wake of the reappearance of several kaiju around the Pacific Rim and the dozens of casualties in Tokyo, a city engineered to be prepared for anything, everyone is asking the same question: who is responsible?

Of course, we can blame aliens from another universe—that’s easy, and the ultimate fault does of course lie with them. But for the last ten years, we have been led to believe the kaiju could not attack again. Now we know that is untrue, and we are expected to believe the responsible party is Dr. Newton Geiszler, once a hero of the breach and object of worldwide adoration.

It’s a convenient explanation, but there’s no way around the fact that Geiszler worked for Shao Industries, a Chinese mega-corporation heavily invested in jaeger warfare. Shao has been quick to disavow its former employee, claiming he acted entirely alone. But is it possible Geiszler is merely a scapegoat for an industry that thrives on the chaos and destruction of battles between jaeger and kaiju?

As we’ve seen in the last ten years, there is always benefit where there is destruction. The Pan-Pacific Defense Corps benefits, as do private security companies. There was no greater opportunity for these institutions to impose their will on the world than the aftermath of the kaiju war. We should be wary of this new attack as a fear-producing event that will allow them to push that vision even further.

***

_2028_

There are signs from the very beginning. Of course there are, and in years to come Hermann will castigate himself every time he lies awake at night for not seeing them. The simple fact is, his happiness blinded him to it. He brushed aside everything that was wrong, trying to hold onto what he thought was a good thing.

It’s gotten worse, though. Newt has gotten worse.

Half the time, now, Newt has the news on in the background of their lab, keeping up a running commentary on the various miseries of the world: misuse of jaeger tech, kaiju blue environmental poisoning, the everyday tragedies of war and poverty and famine. Hermann preferred his metal bands.

Sometimes, Hermann catches him leaving their apartment late at night or coming home in the early hours of the morning, his eyes red-rimmed with sleeplessness. He says it’s extra time in the lab, and Hermann believes him; obsessive research is much more likely from Newt than any other vice. But it is disturbing, particularly when he goes off on tangents about the anteverse Hermann doesn’t quite understand and attributes the knowledge to the drift.

He keeps records of all the civilian casualties of jaeger policing, adding to the running total every time there’s another incident. Twenty deaths in an incident in China, he can recite, ten more in India, one in South Los Angeles.

“They can’t stop letting those things loose on the city streets,” he tells Hermann. “No kaiju left to fight, so they just have to fight political dissidents and looters. God, we should’ve dismantled the program years ago.”

PPDC leadership meetings are always a particular nightmare. They’ve been made co-chairs of the research and development division, which means a lot of meetings with people who do not, particularly, appreciate Newt.

“The problem with our priorities,” Newt says, gesturing wildly at the PowerPoint slide behind him, “is that we have them completely backwards! Now, the red line here represents spending on training for jaeger pilots, something we already have more than enough of. And the blue line here, _way_ down below it, that represents spending on training workers for environmental cleanup on the Pacific coasts. Now we know there are still significant amounts of kaiju blood in the ocean—“

“Pardon me, Dr. Geiszler,” Marshal Quan interrupts. “Is there any data showing that kaiju blood at this level has long-term human health impacts?”

Newt blinks in confusion, and Hermann’s heart sinks for him. “Well, _no_ , because my research proposals weren’t approved,” he says. “Hold on, I have some slides about mutated marine life, let me just—“

Quan holds up a hand and shakes his head. “Thank you, doctor,” he says. “We will look into allocating additional funds to study the impact of kaiju blood. However, there is simply no room to decrease the budget of the jaeger program at the moment. Now, if we could hear from the Americas Defense Unit.”

Newt slinks back to his seat beside Hermann with his shoulders slumped in defeat. Hermann reaches for his hand under the conference table, but Newt bats it away, staring straight ahead through a report on the use of jaegers to combat crime in Chile.

At the end of the meeting, he snatches three bagels from the center of the table and stalks out with a poisonous look at Quan.

Hermann follows him, not bothering to spare an apologetic look at the commanders. “We can pull together some metadata on the effects of the blood,” he says, accepting Newt’s proffered blueberry bagel. “Your problem is that you always go into these things expecting they’ll want to hear what you have to say.”

“One thing you can say about the kaiju,” Newt grumbles, half under his breath, “they’d never tear down your city and tell you it was peacekeeping.”

“Careful, dear,” Hermann says mildly. “You’re find yourself out of a job with that attitude.”

“Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.” Newt bites into one of his bagels and a muscle in his jaw twitches angrily as he chews.

Hermann shoots him a worried glance, but Newt isn’t looking at him. “Well, I have five words for you: exclusive organic kaiju materials rights.”

Hermann can do maths anywhere, and wouldn’t necessarily mind a career shift away from theoretical anteverse physics. But Newt’s field involves highly controlled substances, which is why every aspiring kaiju biologist in the world comes to him and his dwindling supply of samples.

Newt’s eyebrows knit together in a severe scowl. “They’d regret it if they ever tried to stop me from working with kaiju materials,” he says. “I think I’ve earned the right to do that without having to be complicit in the goddamn military-industrial complex, haven’t I?”

Hermann sighs. “I suppose so,” he says. “If only the world worked that way.”

Newt’s quiet until they reach his car in the parking lot. He turns the key in the ignition, but doesn’t drive away, looking down at the steering wheel. Abruptly, he pushes his glasses up and presses his palms to his eyes.

“Are you getting a migraine?” Hermann says. “Here, I’ve got aspirin—“

“Don’t worry, I’m fine,” Newt says, but he doesn’t move. “They hate us, you know that?”

“What?”

“They couldn’t care less what I think,” Newt says harshly. “They don’t respect me, they don’t respect you, the minute we leave those meetings they’re fucking— _sneering_ at us, they don’t give a shit about what we do. They let Mako keep us around but they don’t think there’s any problem that can’t be solved with robots and bombs.”

Their drift connections has been less strong lately — it fades with time, and anyway they only ever did it the once — but Hermann can still feel the white-hot intensity of Newt’s sincerity.

“Newt,” he says cautiously, “don’t you think you might be reading this a little personally?”

Newt turns to look at him, eyebrows raised slightly. “Really, man? You really think those buzzcuts see us as anything but comic relief? We’re supposed to just churn out whatever research they want and shut up.”

Hermann has to admit he has a point. He and Newt tend to be treated with, at the very least, quiet amusement by most of the PPDC. There are exceptions, chiefly Mako and Raleigh, but most of the military types find them, both individually and as a pair, utterly alien.

He’s stopped trying to fight this impression, really; when push comes to shove, his skillset is far more important than what anyone thinks of his clothes or his limp or his personal life.

But it clearly bothers Newt deeply, more than Hermann remembers it ever getting under his skin before. He used to laugh off any officer or pilot who looked at him oddly, breezily contemptuous.

“We’ll show them,” Hermann says. “We always have before, haven’t we? We’ll always be the ones they run for in a crisis.”

Newt gives him a quick half-smile. “Damn right.” He puts the car into reverse. “Anyway, let’s go home.”

A few minutes later, he turns on the radio, where NPR is playing a story of civil war in the Middle East and America’s plans to intervene. Before he can open his mouth to comment, Hermann switches it to the local classical music station, and Newt doesn’t complain.

***

Hermann, Mako, and Jake formulate a plan. It involves Mako looping security footage of the secure cell, Jake ensuring he and his copilot have that night’s security shift, and Hermann creeping down the hallway of the shatterdome around 3 am, trying to remain quiet despite feeling on the verge of a panic attack.

“Alright,” Jake says when they meet outside the holding cell. “Are you ready to do this?”

“Yes, yes,” Hermann says impatiently. “I can handle it.”

Jake exchanges an uneasy look with Nathan Lambert. “If you can find out anything we might be able to take back to the marshal, that would be… uh, good.”

Hermann straightens the label of his jacket. “That is the goal, yes.”

Jake nods uncertainly. “Right. Well, just stay, um, out of range of any… out of reach. And if you need anything, we can hear you from here, so just say the word. We’ve got three hours.”

He types in the code and does the retinal scan to open the secure doors. “Well,” Hermann says. “Once more unto the breach, eh?”

Jake looks at him quizzically, and he adds, “Shakespeare. Not literal,” and walks through the door.

Newt’s ramrod straight figure looks over at him for just a second before his eyes flicker back to the wall.

They did bandage his face, but he’s pale, and he’s thin — Jake said the _things_ have been refusing food, on some kind of perverse hunger strike. The shackles around his wrists and ankles are clearly slightly too tight, but the expression on his face… that’s the worst of it, those cold and indifferent eyes.

“Hello,” Hermann says, tugging the other chair in the room to just over an arm’s length away from him. “I don’t know how to address you — is there a name you would prefer? I certainly can’t use Newton.”

The thing wearing Newt’s face sneers at him. “You know our name. Precursors, you call us.”

Hermann sits down, folds his hands neatly in his lap. “Hmm. A bit too much like a term of respect for my liking. I think I’ll stick with — Alice, wasn’t it?” He forces himself to look the thing in the eyes, and there’s truly nothing left of Newt in them. “Assuming you won’t let me speak with Newt, is there anything you’d like to discuss?”

The thing closes its eyes and shakes its head. “You cannot imagine how insignificant you are to us, Doctor. Even to him at the end of the day.”

Hermann scoffs. “Really, now? Trivial emotional manipulation, from the hivemind of an alien higher intelligence?”

He doesn’t quite know why he’s saying it, but it seems to get a reaction, at least. He watches Newt’s hands tense at the thing strains against its restraints.

“You know, I always expect more from you. I don’t know why — the second attempt was fairly pathetic compared with the first. And now you’re sitting in a cell, completely powerless, stuffed into the mind of one human man who you can’t even fully control.”

The thing laughs then, a bitter, harsh laugh. “Can’t control _him_? You saw what he was willing to do to the world, for us. There is nothing more powerless than a single human mind.”

 _A single human mind_. Hermann tries to reach out mentally for any hint of the ghost drift, once so easy to locate, but he finds nothing.

“No man is an island,” Hermann says, almost to himself, and then slightly louder he adds, “I know you were never fond of English poetry, Newt, but I always liked John Donne. ‘Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.’”

“Who are you talking to?”

Hermann ignores it. “I know you can hear me, Newton. If I sit here and recite poetry all night, will that irritate you enough to speak to me?”

There is no response.

“I suppose if I really wanted to bore you, I’d recite mathematical proofs,” Hermann says. “I remember you used to compare maths to philosophy — you said they weren’t sciences, they weren’t any great truths in them, they were only attempts to describe the world rather than find any new information about it.”

“We have little use for either.” He can hear irritation in the tone now, the voice not as measured and inhuman as it was, and it’s almost satisfying.

“Hmm,” Hermann says. “What about Morbid Angels or Isaac Asimov? The drift never goes only one way. You must have some appreciation for Newt’s passions.”

There’s a long silence, and then he says, “Morbid Angel.”

“What?”

“It’s just Morbid Angel, Hermann,” says a voice that sounds nearly familiar. “It’s not plural just because it’s a band name.”

Hermann draws in a harsh breath, leans forward without thinking. “Newt?” he hears himself say, quietly. “Can you hear me?”

Newt’s eyes flicker towards him and they meet, for a moment. Then they flick back towards the wall and resume their silent stare.

“Alright,” Hermann says. “Morbid Angel, yes. Next time I’ll bring some of that Satan-worshipper music with me, I’m sure you’d appreciate that. I may still have some of your demos.” He knows he does; there are multiple tracks of Newt screaming lyrics about hating the government on his laptop, though they might not be appropriate for his current goals.

No one responds to that, and no one responds to Hermann for the rest of the night, through which he rambles about Isaac Asimov and his kaiju blood research — he’s developed a water purification tablet that neutralizes its effects when ingested, something Newt had once petitioned the council for research dollars for every day for three months, but there’s no reaction at all. He even does recite some John Donne, which is received in exactly the same way.

After a while, when he’s lost track of time entirely, he hears the intercom click on. “Hey,” Jake’s voice says. “We’ve got fifteen minutes before shift change, you should probably wrap things up.”

“Thank you, Ranger Pentecost.” Hermann tries, again, to make eye contact, but Newt’s eyes are fixed on a point above his head. He isn’t blinking enough.

It’s difficult to look away from him, even now, with his cold eyes and distant smile. It’s still a face that’s etched into his memory, the person who was — who still is — the center of his small universe.

“Newt,” he says, quietly. “I’ll come back as soon as I can, alright? Please — keep fighting it. The world needs you to do that.” His voice breaks on the last phrase, frayed with emotion he’s been trying to avoid. “I need you to do that.”

The voice that answers is utterly indifferent. “We’ll see you soon, Dr. Gottlieb.”

Mako and Jake are waiting for him, and they both look at him quizzically. “I can get through to him,” Hermann says. “It’ll take some time. But I can.”

They exchange a look, not skeptical but a non-verbal communication, and Jake nods. “We’ll make it happen,” he says.

When he’s alone, Hermann flips through his notes on neurology again. There have been studies which show drifting can treat mental conditions, or at least which purport to show that. Dr. Bryant, the psychologist he used to see in Los Angeles, has published studies on it. There’s one on the use of drift technology to communicate with patients who are non-verbal for various reasons, with flowery language about how it’s changed their lives.

Hermann traces patterns of neural pathways in Bryant’s diagrams. He’ll do it if he has to, he decides. If that’s how he can help, he’ll do it.

***

 _New Scientist_ magazine, published October 2031

Psychosurgery: Research suggests neural drift may have implications for treatment of mental illness

The neural linking technology pioneered by the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps (PPDC) has historically been used mostly to operate jaegers and other heavy machinery. But one PPDC researcher believes the drift may be useful in the treatment of mental illnesses.

Dr. Joyce Bryant, a psychologist who works with PPDC veterans, said drifting has been shown to improve symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), even when both drift partners are affected.

In Bryant’s new book, “Interconnected: How Neural Connectivity Can Cure Humanity’s Chronic Loneliness”, she details several cases of what she calls “neural surgery”. It’s a process by which one drift partner uses mental methods to treat the thought patterns of another; Bryant believes it can be used to reduce or even remove symptoms of mental illness.

***

Liwen Shao taps her foot impatiently in the elevator on the way to Newt’s apartment. “Let’s try to keep this brief, Dr. Gottlieb,” she says.

Hermann is already beginning to regret this. Mako had talked Shao around to letting him visit the apartment — technically still a crime scene, after PPDC personnel were dispatched to remove the kaiju brain. They haven’t even told Hermann where that’s being kept; apparently his clearance isn’t high enough. But Shao still has access, as disturbing as that is.

“I’ll be quick,” he says as the elevator doors open.

She nods at him and remains standing in the doorway, hands folded behind her back. “Don’t worry about fingerprints,” she says casually. “I will take care of the police if they investigate further.”

Hermann has no desire to know exactly what that means.

He steps past her and surveys Newt’s apartment. The immediate impression he has is that the place doesn’t look lived in by anyone, much less by Newt, who left his notes all over the floors of their apartment, covered the bathroom mirror in post-it notes to himself and left kaiju tissue samples in the refrigerator. This place is spotless and tidy, with no apparent signs of the inhabitant’s personality.

It looks vaguely like everywhere Hermann ever lived before he met Newt, before the drift.

There are things out of place, of course, all of them mundane and all the stranger for that. He doesn’t what exactly he was expecting — scrawled words in an alien language on the walls, perhaps? — but there’s nothing like that. Instead, there are bottles of expensive wine in the kitchen and neatly arranged designer suits in the closet. The bookshelves are entirely populated with technical manuals and the walls are decorated with tasteful modern art. There is no psychiatric medication in the bathroom cabinet.

In Newt’s office, there are no handwritten notes, only an impossibly thin Shao-made laptop.

Hermann turns behind him to call back to Shao, but she’s already standing behind him, not having made a sound. He jumps slightly, but she ignores it. “His password is always ‘Yamarashi,’” she says. “Even though I have sent him many, many memos about cybersecurity.”

“I should have guessed,” Hermann mutters. The password unlocks the laptop, and Hermann quickly finds the file directory.

Shao hands him a flash drive. “Copy what you need,” she says.

He nods and begins copying anything that looks like a work-related file. There are many of them, and probably limited new information to glean from them, but he’ll go through them all when he has the time, in search of any clues.

There are only a handful of unrelated files on the computer; video clips, they look like. Hermann clicks on one and it instantly brings up a scene from a movie.

“Is that _Godzilla_?” Shao says, horrified.

Onscreen, an enormous, reptilian monster smashes into an enormous, robotic replica of itself. He’d watched one of these with Newt once, after years of insisting his fascination with the things was completely distasteful, and the experience hadn’t changed his mind.

“You’re supposed to root for Godzilla, a little bit,” Newt had said. “She’s not like our kaiju. She’s in her own world, it’s just changed.” That wasn’t long, Hermann remembers, before he took the job at Shao Industries.

“Yes,” Hermann says. “That is… like him.”

He doesn’t have to click on them to know the rest of the video files will be more or less the same.

Newt’s internet history isn’t dissimilar. He’s bookmarked news footage of every kaiju attack, and he googles himself with uncommon frequency.

“There’s nothing usable here,” Hermann says.

Shao leans over his shoulder. “Check the ‘notes to self’ app.”

Hermann selects the little notepad icon at the bottom of the screen. Immediately, it brings up the most recent message written. Hermann and Shao read it together in silence.

It’s a log of chunks of time, hours and sometimes days at a time. A few of them have small notations next to them; “I think I remember San Francisco?”, “LS says I was at office”.

“Missing time,” Hermann says, voice hollow.

At the bottom, written in a way that is all run together with little punctuation: _alice says to stop keeping track i still don’t remember alice says it’s alright she’ll take care of it. look at this next time you’re worried newt it’s fine._

“God.” Hermann’s voice sounds distant to himself. “I knew — I knew on some level he was aware of what was happening, I just…” He trails off, trying to hold back the tears he feels gathering in his eyes.

Shao sets her hand lightly on his shoulder. “I think we should go now, Dr. Gottlieb.”

Hermann has been going to visit Newt as often as he can, saying whatever comes to mind in hopes of provoking a reaction of any kind. He hasn’t had any success, and Alice, as he’s come to think of it, has stopped speaking to him. He’s convinced there has to be a strategy that will break through, but he can tell that even Jake and Mako are getting skeptical. It seems hopeless; he knows that.

That night, he paces back and forth in front of his chair, full of restless energy. Newt says nothing; neither does Alice.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Hermann says after a few minutes. “Why didn’t you say anything, if you knew you were losing time? Didn’t you know I would have helped, you idiot?”

Nothing.

Hermann keeps pacing. “Did you convince yourself that you could solve this yourself, that your precious _Alice_ would take care of everything? Absolutely no sense of self-preservation, Newton, truly, the first time you did this it almost killed you and you thought you’d just go on doing it? If you said just _one_ thing to me, in ten _years_ , we could have avoided all this.”

The voice that speaks up then is quiet and cracked. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Hermann pauses. He looks over at Newt, searching for a hint as to who he’s speaking to, but his head is bowed, almost like he’s avoiding looking at Hermann at all.

“What don’t I know?” he says cautiously, quietly.

Newt’s frame shivers as if he’s trying to shake something off, and Hermann leans forward with searching eyes.

“It was too late,” Newt’s voice says, and then his voice tips over into fast-paced panic. “When I knew it was happening, it was already too late, I couldn’t fight it, I couldn’t tell you, they would’ve just done it to you too god Hermann I couldn't let that happen to you…” His voice breaks off in a sharp, pained intake of breath.

Hermann stumbles to his feet, and hesitates for only a moment before crossing the distance between the two of them. Newt’s chest is heaving like he can’t breathe, and Hermann ignores Jake’s voice over the intercom calling, “Gottlieb! What are you doing?”

“Newt.” Hermann can see his hand shaking as he reaches for Newt’s shoulder. “Please, look at me.”

Newt jerks violently away from him, but there’s hardly any room, in his restraints, to move, and Hermann holds on to the thin fabric of his shirt. “Don’t,” Newt says, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, don’t hurt me—“

Hermann’s heart sinks. “Newton, I’m not here to hurt you, I’m here to help. You’re doing so well maintaining control, can you just—“

As he says it, he sees Newt’s head move quickly in a jerky, sudden motion, and he lets go, scrambling backwards. Newt’s teeth close around thin air and the thing snarls in his voice, vicious and animalistic.

“Back off, Doctor,” it says. “You see? All that’s left of him is a pathetic, babbling wreck.”

Before Hermann can respond, Jake barrels through the door and pulls him backwards. “What the hell are you doing?” he hisses, but Hermann barely hears it, eyes still fixed on Newt even as he allows Jake to half-drag him out of the room. “You’re not supposed to _touch_ him, man, that’s part of the deal here, that you don’t get yourself killed!”

Hermann shakes him off, straightening his coat and tie distractedly. “I was right,” he says. He’s still staring at the door; Lambert slams it shut, looking disconcerted. “I can reach him. I knew it, I _knew_ it.”

Slowly, he feels a grin stretch across his face. Jake and Lambert exchange a skeptical look. “Is this — helping?” Lambert says.

Hermann squares his shoulders and pushes his glasses up. “It’s the only thing that will help,” he says. “This is the battleground on which we are fighting now, Ranger Lambert, and I intend to win.”

Jake gives him another one of those appraising, slightly judgmental looks. “You really love him, huh?” he says.

Hermann feels the adrenaline draining out of him, the morsel of hope feeling less significant already and the task ahead of him insurmountably large. He looks back through the two-way mirror at Newt, his head hanging low again but now tossing restlessly from side to side as if he’s struggling with himself, or having a nightmare. “More than anything,” he says, “but I won’t let that get in the way.”

***

_2029_

In the three months between Newt initially bringing up the job offer from Shao Industries and actually accepting it, they fight about it nearly every day.

He first mentions it at work, completely casually, when they’re both staying late in the lab, filling out the year’s funding paperwork.

“If they ask me to cut any more money from the technology budget, I’m going on strike,” Hermann mutters.

Newt laughs. “Yeah.” After a moment of silence, he says, “Hermann? I, uh, got a job offer. From Shao Industries.”

Hermann looks up from his paperwork so quickly that the glasses perched on the edge of his nose slip off. “What? You applied for a job at _Shao_?”

Newt looks vaguely shamefaced, red felt-tip pen spinning nervously in his fingers. “Well, I didn’t really have to apply, so much, more like… called the CEO and asked… It’s a _good_ offer, dude. No one there’s going to be cutting my budget or telling me what I should work on.”

There must be some precedent to this, some previous conversation that Hermann has missed.

“We are talking about the Shao Industries that sells weapons to half the governments on earth? The Shao Industries that’s developing automated jaegers?”

“Not automated,” Newt says quietly. “Remote piloted.”

“Oh, forgive me, _remote piloted._ Well, who wouldn’t want to combine the brute force of a jaeger with the stellar legacy of drone warfare.”

Newt scowls at him, and Hermann is more than a little caught off guard by the intensity of it. “Don’t you remember what I wrote to you when the PPDC started? I said I was I gonna help with the kaiju and then get out. And that was what, fifteen years ago? I can’t stay here forever, Hermann, it’s driving me crazy. If we worked for Shao for a couple of years we could make _so much money_.”

He gestures wildly with the pen, a sweeping indictment of their surroundings, their slightly outdated lab equipment and carefully itemized budget proposals. “Then we could quit, in and out, found a company on some sweet tropical island, I’ll invent enough shit to justify all your theoretical stuff and we’d never have to worry about working for anyone but ourselves again.”

Hermann just stares at him. “Newt, I understand this isn’t your favorite time of the year—“

“ _Not_ what I’m talking about,” Newt interrupts.

“—But we are not considering Shao Industries. You hate Liwen Shao! You called her Erik Prince with the aesthetic of a Bond villain!”

“I did say one of the better Bond villains.” Newt pauses, and Hermann just glares at him. “Look, you didn’t talk to Shao, she offered me a _lot_ of influence on the direction of the company. We could make a difference there! We’re sure as hell not making one with these people, you know that!”

“You can’t _believe_ someone like,” Hermann says, frustrated. “There’s no independence in corporate culture, no matter what she’s said to you. We may not have an ideal budget, but at least we don’t have to worry about a profit motive.”

Newt throws aside a stack of his papers and says, “I’m done with this. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

Stunned, Hermann watches him go.

He finishes filling out his paperwork in silence, turning over all of the possible reasons Newt could possibly have for thinking Shao Industries is even an option, let alone an attractive one. Surely it can’t be something he’s serious about. It’s just one of his little ideas that he’ll laugh at later as if he hadn’t come up with it himself.

When Hermann takes the elevator down to the lobby, Newt is sitting by himself eating vending machine Skittles and looking so forlorn that Hermann’s annoyance softens. “Oh, do cheer up,” he says. “If you’re so set on it, we’ll find a job in the private sector. You know I only stay here because you want your legally-acquired tissue samples.”

Newt smiles at him and drops the bag of Skittles; several of them scatter onto the marble floor PPDC Headquarters and Hermann winces.

“Thank you,” Newt says, springing to his feet. “I promise, this is gonna be a good thing. This is what we’re _supposed_ to be doing.”

He’s giving Hermann that slightly pathetic look that means he’s about to push the line on what is considered a public display of affection; Hermann glances around the lobby and, after ensuring there is no one else present, open his arms in acceptance of an impending hug.

Newt squeezes him tightly, pushing the line a little further and maneuvering his hand into Hermann’s hair. “It’s gonna be good,” he says again. “Love you. Promise.”

“Not Shao, though,” Hermann says, slightly muffled.

“Maybe Shao, though?”

“Absolutely not.”

Newt lets it go for the night, but in the morning he’s at it again, and it goes on like that for weeks, Newt insisting on the merits of Shao Industries above every other corporation or research institution they could possibly work for. Every one of their conversations about it devolves into a shouting match of the kind that earns them genuine alarm from the lab techs and a reprimand from their landlord.

It takes him three months to announce, over Chinese takeout, what Hermann has suspected all along.

“I took the job,” Newt says, not making eye contact. “I’m leaving in four days.” He looks up from his fried rice then, pleading expression on his face. “ _Please_ come with me. There’s a job for you if you want it, hell, you don’t even have to work, I’ll make plenty of money, just… Come with me. Please.”

He reaches across the table for Hermann’s hand, but Hermann yanks it away, feeling as though he’s been slapped.

“Did you ever really care what I thought, then?” he says.

Newt doesn’t respond.

“I most certainly will _not_ go to China with you to enable this ridiculous — ridiculous nonsense.” Hermann can feel his hands start to shake and he clasps them together to steady them. “I will stay right here, and when you realize what an absurd mistake you’re making you can bloody well come back.”

Newt opens his mouth to say something else, and then shuts it. Abruptly, with a horrible scraping sound of metal chair legs on floor, he gets up from the table and grabs the leather jacket he’s thrown over his chair. “I think I should get a hotel for tonight,” he says.

Hermann is unable to think of a reply for that until Newt is always halfway out the door, and ends up shouting, “Fine! Go!” at his back.

Hermann can scarcely sleep that night, and when he does he has terrible dreams, visions of kaiju teeth biting into human flesh as he always does on his worst nights.

Newt doesn’t come back for three days.

When he does, he rings the doorbell as though he doesn’t have his own key, and Hermann stares a little when he opens the door. Newt’s got a new pair of glasses frame, thin gold instead of thick black plastic, and he’s wearing what Hermann would swear is a suit that’s been actually tailored. In another context it would be impressive, but, well. He doesn’t look like himself.

“You’re here to collect your things, then?” Hermann says bluntly, shoving his hands into the pockets of his sweater.

Newt nods, reluctantly. “The essentials. I… guess there’s no chance you’ve changed your mind? About coming with me?”

“It doesn’t seem like you’ve changed your mind about going,” Hermann says.

Newt nods, and Hermann turns his back on him. He retreats to his study and spends the next hour resolutely pretending to work, trying not to cry.

He doesn’t take his eyes away from his computer screen when Newt walks in and sets one of his ghoulish kaiju figurines on Hermann’s desk.

“It’s Hardship,” he says, by way of explanation. “Just keep this guy around and it’ll be like I never left.”

Hermann loses his battle against crying, then.

“Oh, don’t _cry_ ,” Newt says helplessly, and embraces him awkwardly; Hermann should resist being pulled forward into his arms, but he doesn’t, pressing his face into the rough fabric of Newt’s suit jacket. “Don’t—Hermann, it’s okay, really, it’s not forever.”

“Then don’t go,” Hermann says, hearing how raw with emotion his voice is and hating it. “You don’t always have to be so damned _stubborn.”_

Newt kisses him lightly on the top of the head and stays there for a long moment, long enough that Hermann manages feel almost hopeful.

“I do,” Newt says, eventually. “I do have to.”

There’s the sudden, abrupt sound of a cell phone alarm beeping, and Newt withdraws from him, taking the phone out of his pocket and looking at it with resignation. “There’s a car waiting for me,” he says, apologetically.

There’s another dark flare of anger in Hermann’s chest, and he spins his chair back away from Newt, staring resolutely in the other direction.

“I’ll call from Shanghai,” Newt says, and Hermann doesn’t respond.

He listens to the sound of Newt’s footsteps walking away, of the door shutting behind him.

The little figure of Hardship wobbles uncertainly on the edge of his desk, threatening to fall.

***

Except from the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps training materials, 2020 edition

The primary tool in the fight against the kaiju isn’t the jaeger, though: it’s the neural drift, a concept and technology developed by the brilliant minds in our J-tech division. Drifting with another person means linking your minds together in order to operate a jaeger, and it’s one of the greatest displays of human spirit you’ll ever see.

If you’ve come to the pilot training program with a relative or close friend with whom you’ve been found drift compatible, congratulations! Neural drifting can deepen that bond in a way you may never have imagined. If you’ve come alone, that’s okay too! Our psychology assessments have found that your personality type is suited for drifting, and through carefully personality testing, you’ll be paired with your ideal co-pilot. The important thing is that once you drift with someone compatible, you don’t hold anything back. Being truly open to the neural drift experience will make you a better soldier _and_ a better person!

***

Hermann decides that the best metaphor for the problem they’re facing is hemispheric disconnection syndrome.

The jaeger system functions on the right-brain left-brain divide, and that feature of the drift has been translated to other functions of the drift technology; Hermann had used it to connect Raleigh’s motor functions with his prosthetic legs, for example. Drifting without operating any machinery is a slightly different proposition, but still requires the domination of one hemisphere over another, and the ceding of the other to the influence of one’s drift partner. That is part of the reason drifting with a kaiju is so unnatural; they don’t have a brain anatomy in any way like a human’s, and there are no hemispheres to easily mesh with.

Most people have a naturally dominant brain hemisphere, and Hermann had experienced that in the drift: his was the left brain, and Newt’s was the right, which is supposed to be a sign of potential drift compatibility. This is a good sign, Hermann thinks, a sign that what he’s planning to do might work.

So, if his hypothesis is correct, Newt’s right brain would have remained in more in control while drifting with the kaiju brain, and “Alice” would have greater control over the left. Rational thinking, precision, logic — exactly what they needed, and never Newton’s strong suit.

So. Hemispheric disconnection syndrome, the condition in which right and left brain fail to communicate with one another. Not in the traditional sense, of course, but close enough, Hermann thinks, at least if he’s right. If he’s right, then Newt’s personality and intentions are more or less confined to one half of his brain, with the precursors controlling the other, and they’re preventing connection between the two.

So if Bryant’s “psychic surgery” is the solution, that’s what the surgery will have to be: reuniting the two halves, and hoping Newt’s whole brain can reject the precursors before they take over entirely.

Hermann has to believe that’s possible. They haven’t gotten rid of Newt yet, which is one point in his favor.

He tells Mako about this, and she looks thoughtful. “And there’s no chance it could happen again?” she says.

“Who else would be foolish enough to drift with a kaiju brain?”

She smiles thinly, and flicks through the pages of his neuroscience notes again. “But we can’t know,” she says, and sighs. “I will never be able to stop worrying about what we can’t know.”

In truth, Hermann’s first concern is not exactly the goal of finding a permanent solution to the kaiju problem. It would be a benefit to the world, of course, if they could ensure this didn’t happen again with more certainty than they’d been able to last time, if they could not only say the world wasn’t under attack but also that it was truly safe.

But is it selfish, he wonders, to think it would be worth putting that off for another time in order to make sure Newt was safe? To just help this one person instead of using him in service of a larger goal, as the precursors had?

It probably is selfish, he thinks. Almost certainly.

“Well,” he says, “Newton certainly must know them well by now.”

Mako reaches out and pats him lightly on the shoulder. “I hope you’re right,” she says. “I know how difficult this must be for you, and I..”

She trails off, and Hermann turns to see that she’s looking at Marshal Warren, who is striding towards them in conversation with the head of engineering. They both freeze, but he walks past them without pausing, the click of his boots loud and precise on the concrete floor.

Hermann sees the nervous expression on Mako’s face and feels slightly irritated.

“You shouldn’t have to be intimidated by him, you know,” he says.

She sighs and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s all politics,” she says. “If the American military personnel the counsel hires object to me and my policies, I won’t make it through the next election. The Americans hold all the cards.”

Hermann couldn’t give less of a damn about politics, but he doesn’t want to say that to Mako. She’s given so much of herself these past few years attempting to drag the PPDC back up to its former glory which the counsel tries to drag it into the mud, and now her brother is part of it too, the whole broken machine.

She has a heavy family legacy, which Hermann knows well enough to understand.

“I appreciate the risk you’re taking,” Hermann says. “When the Marshal finds out what I’ve done, I’ll swear up and down you knew nothing about it.”

Mako laughs and gives him a quick, grateful smile.

He calls Dr. Bryant that night, and when she hears his voice, she gasps. “ _Hermann_ ! Oh, I can’t believe I’m hearing from you after all these years! How _are_ you, I can’t imagine what you’re dealing with right now!”

Hermann drums his fingers against his desk, already impatient. Bryant is a brilliant, innovative mind, he reminds himself, despite also being intensely annoying. “Dr. Bryant,” he says: “I have a question for you, under the strictest doctor-patient confidentiality, you understated.”

He explains the situation and his theory to her, and then asks in a rush, “Well, do you think there’s any chance it would work?”

There’s a silence on the other end of the line. “It could,” she says. “Of course, nothing like it has ever been tried before, but… it could.”

“That’s an enormous relief to hear,” Hermann says.

“The trick, you know, is making sure that his mental capacity is strong enough to overcome that invasion during the moment of reconnection,” Bryant says. “And I think… I think you’re the right person to do that. Of all the drift compatible pairs I’ve worked with, the two of you had such a high level of mental exchange. He’ll have to be able to lean on that.”

Hermann looks down at his drawings, his sketches of the right and left brain. “It’s been years,” he says. “The ghost drifting has nearly stopped, I still have… dreams sometimes, but that’s all. It’s not anything like it was when you saw us.”

Bryant hums thoughtfully. “It’s fairly typical to worry about re-establishing a drift connection after some time, Hermann, but people generally find that it’s quite easy.”

“I believe we might be the exception to that,” Hermann says drily.

Bryant’s tone is intended, he knows, to be soothing. “You need to approach this as a mutual connection,” she says. “If you see it as helping him achieve his goals, rather than imposing what you want to happen onto the drift, you’ll be much more successful. You do think he wants to solve this problem, don’t you?”

This problem. He almost laughs, listening to her describe what they’re facing as though it’s a small domestic dispute. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I think so.”

After Hermann hangs up the phone, he scrawls another notation in his notebook. _Self-belief instrumental to success_ , he writes, only half-believing even that.

He intends to give it a few days, see how much further he can progress with Newt before they try this, but naturally that isn’t how it turns out.

***

_2030_

Newt sends postcards from China, occasionally.

It’s the strangest part of the whole situation, Hermann thinks, to get these odd reminders of Newt’s presence in his life, which had gone in a matter of months from virtually constant to almost totally non-existent.

He doesn’t call — Hermann calls, of course, at first, and gets a scattered handful of “can’t talk now, call later” text messages back before Newt stops responding entirely. He doesn’t email, which Hermann persisted in doing for quite a while, reporting on the mundane occupancies of his day and sending links to interesting journal studies as if Newt was going to resume doing the same. It took him entirely too long to realize that Newt wasn’t just busy adjusting to his new job but actually did not want to reply, had no intention of replying.

It has been years, Hermann thinks, more than ten years, since he’d gone more than a day or two without receiving an email of some kind from Newt. He would be so happy, now, with a BCC on an absurd message to Stacker Pentecost about whether it was workplace safety violation to wear Crocs in the lab.

Instead, he gets the occasional postcard from Shanghai, written in handwriting that is more careful than Newt’s usual scrawl but somehow seems more inconsiderate for that.

 _Hermann,_ this one says, on the back of an infuriating photo of a group of pandas, _How’s LA? Everything here’s going really well! Working with someone new named Alice. She’s so fascinating, you’d like her. Come visit sometime and I’ll get you a job interview. —Newt_

Taped onto this is an even greater insult: a business card for Dr. Newton Geiszler, Head of Research and Development at Shao Industries. Hermann makes a specific point of finding a shredder just to dispose of the thing.

 _Alice._ Hermann thinks the name bitterly. He’s certain he can picture exactly the type of person this is. Some woman with an asymmetrical haircut and no respect for workplace dress codes, who talks about IPOs and cryptocurrencies and agrees with whatever Newt says. Hermann hates her passionately, whoever she is.

He gets through about fifteen more minutes of lab work without trying to look her up. There’s no “Alice” listed as an employee of Shao R&D, and he can’t find her in Newt’s Facebook friends or LinkedIn contacts or Twitter feed, and then he makes himself stop looking.

Is it possible this “Alice” is someone Newt’s invented to make him jealous.

No. No, that would be ridiculous. Clearly if Newton gave a damn what Hermann thought he would express it in some way other than allusions to a new coworker on a postcard.

The PPDC’s main research lab feels ridiculously empty to Hermann now, and the last of his remaining coworkers have started to file out for the night, some of them looking at him which expressions of concern that he responds to with a dismissive wave.

They all know the broad outline of what’s going on, of course. There was an air of shock to the whole department when Newton left, without so much as a word to his direct subordinates. A dozen people have remarked to Hermann on how strange it is, but none of them are living in the apartment that is still half-full of Newton’s things, left behind in disarray with no apparent sign that he wants them back.

They aren’t getting postcards about some Alice who is probably at this very moment flattering Newt’s ego by pretending to believe his theories about punctuated equilibrium evolution.

The equations on Hermann’s chalkboard are starting to blur.

He doesn’t know how to categorize what has apparently happened between them; it’s not exactly a “breakup”, more like the abrupt cessation of a relationship without any real explanation.

Part of him expects Newt will be back any day now. It’s not as though this is the first time one of them has left, stormed out in the wake of some fight and not come home for days.

But those were _arguments,_ conflicts with some predictable and concrete cause, and this is something else. This is Newt deciding to leave and acting as though Hermann is almost incidental to that decision.

Hermann blames himself for it, sometimes. Part of him wonders if it might have been the ghost drifting, if the reason for Newt’s coldness, Newt’s closed-off refusal to discuss what had happened at all, is the product of something in his own subconscious.

Sometimes he simply blames himself for the way he’d acted, his reluctance to make anything between them as formal as it might’ve been. He was the one who’d always refused any public display of their relationship, had insisted on Newt referring to him as a “friend and colleague” in his journal publication acknowledgements and the dedications of his books.

Newt must have known, didn’t he? They lived together, they were listed as each other’s next of kin on PPDC paperwork — Newt had seen the inside of his mind, for God’s sake.

No. He knew.

So most of the time he blames himself only inasmuch as he knows he should never have entrusted so much of himself to someone who had never been careful with anything.

Approximately one minute after the last of his colleagues leaves the lab, Hermann pulls out his phone and begins composing a furious email.

_Newton,_

_Kindly dispense with the childish postcards and communicate with me in a manner that does not require international mail. I am aware of the fact that there are pandas located in China and do not need to see photos of them._

_As you clearly have no interest in continuing any form of personal relationship with me, I suggest we keep things purely professional from now on. Please contact my assistant about where I can send your remaining possessions, as I very much look forward to enjoying an apartment free of manga comics and marijuana-themed socks._

_I wish you and your colleagues all the best in your program of drone warfare._

_—Dr. H. Gottlieb_

A few weeks later, he gets another postcard, this one featuring a photo of Disneyland Shanghai, and nearly screams.

_Hermann,_

_Keep the manga and weed socks — or throw ‘em out, whatever’s easier. Offer still stands if you’re ever looking for a change._

_—Newt_

Hermann doesn’t write him back.

***

Partial transcription of the cable news program _Callout with Melissa Freedman_ , interview with U.S. legal scholar Douglas Richards, February 28, 2035

MF: So in your professional opinion, if Dr. Geiszler were to be extradited to the United States today, would we see charges filed against him?

DR: Almost certainly, yes. Geiszler is in violation of a enormous number of American laws, including the possession of kaiju materials itself, which is a federal crime. I think it’s likely in this case that a prosecutor would choose to charge him with the murders of the Tokyo victims.

MF: What about the international criminal court, is that a possibility?

DR: Certainly it is. International law actually gives a person’s home country the first right to charge someone with kaiju-related crimes, but the ICC would probably choose to file charges if the U.S. or Germany didn’t, yes.

MF: Now what do you think of this statement Hermann Gottlieb has released, claiming that Dr. Geiszler was under the influence of the precursor hivemind?

DR: [ _chuckles]_ Well, Melissa, I don’t see why that wouldn’t fall under the insanity defense. But as you know, it’s extraordinarily difficult to get that defense to stand up in court.

***

Emails between Dr. Hermann Gottlieb and Karla Gottlieb, member of the German Bundestag (Social Democratic Party), February 2035

Subject: [No subject]

Hermann,

I’ve been calling for days now and I understand why you haven’t responded, but when you have a moment, spare a thought for your little sister who’s very worried for you, alright?

I’m very glad to hear that you’re safe, and proud to hear the Gottliebs are still leading the war effort — as terrible as it is to hear we might have to fight another war. But I’m terribly sorry to hear about Newton. I’m sure you’re doing everything that you can for him right now, but I hope you understand that whatever happens, it won’t be your fault.

I mean that.

If there’s anything at all I can do, please please let me know. I love you. Apart from anything else, you’ll always be my hero.

Love,

Karla

 

Subject: Re: [No subject]

Dear Karla,

I apologize for the late response. I’m sure you can imagine the amount of pressure I’m under right now. To be honest, I’m exhausted, but I feel responsible for doing as much as I can for Newton. I should have known years ago that something was wrong. If I’m going to live with that, I need to believe I can help him now. It’s good to know you’ll be there if we need an attorney or an ally in the government. And, of course, to know you don’t think I’ve lost my mind entirely.

It’s difficult, at the moment, to know what to expect next. Please stay in Germany, away from the water, and make sure the rest of the family does as well. I will update you as soon as I know more.

All my love,

Hermann

***

_2031_

When Hermann gets the invitation to Mako and Raleigh’s wedding, he immediately vows to go and not to be pathetic.

It would be pathetic if he didn’t go — he would certainly be the only one from the old days not in attendance — and it would be pathetic if he showed any sign of having becoming the kind of person who got maudlin and lonely at weddings or contemplated their own lack of anyone to pledge eternal love and loyalty to. So. He simply won’t do any of that.

Hermann has become firmly convinced in the past two years that Newton Geiszler is the cause of most evils in the world, ranging from Shao’s corporate policies to the declining budget of the PPDC to Hermann’s own worsening chronic pain and handful of grey hairs. Anyone would be able to tell he’s better off.

The wedding is in Tokyo, and it’s a small affair, friends and family only for two people who don’t have much in the way of surviving family. Mako and Raleigh both wear their PPDC dress uniforms, and Hermann gets through the ceremony admirably well, he thinks.

It helps that Newton isn’t there.

He’s blessedly spared from the expectation to dance at the reception. Tendo Choi sits with him at a table at the back of the room and they get through a few drinks talking about Tendo’s new job and his children, who are back home in America with Alison.

Eventually, though, Tendo gives him a sidelong glance and says, “So… have you heard from Newt lately?”

Hermann rolls his eyes immediately and takes a long sip of his rum and coke. “No, I haven’t,” he says. “Why, have you?”

“Uh, not really,” Tendo says. “It’s just that he’s kind of… heading over here.” He nods his head slightly towards the door of the reception hall, and Hermann spins around too quickly, almost tips out of his chair.

Newt, striding confidently in their direction, grins at them and waves. He’s wearing a _very_ expensive-looking suit, and sunglasses indoors, and Hermann wants nothing more than to sink into the floor and vanish.

“Hermann! Tendo!” he crows from about ten feet away, and when he bounds over to them he claps a hand on each of their shoulders, beaming. “Look at this, we got the dream team all back in one place again!”

Hermann flinches instantly away from his hand. “Dr. Geiszler,” he manages.

“Hey, Newt,” Tendo says awkwardly. “How’ve you been?”

“Good, good,” Newt says breezily. Hermann can’t really tell where he’s looking, behind the sunglasses. “It’s great to see you guys again, man, things have going so well at Shao! You both really should call me back about those jobs, man.”

Tendo leans a little further away from him. “I think we’re both pretty happy where we are.”

Newt nods understandingly. “Well, at least come to China sometime. You guys have to meet Alice, she couldn’t make it to the wedding, but she’d love you guys.”

Hermann sets his glass down on the table with a resounding thud. “Yes, I’m sure we would all adore Alice,” he says. “She must be simply _fascinating_. You just can’t stop talking about her!” He forces a laugh, and it sounds a little hysterical.

Tendo grimaces. “Oh-kay. Uh, Newt, it looks like Mako and Raleigh are free. You should go say hi.”

“Yeah, for sure. We’ll catch up later.” Newt clasps a hand on Hermann’s shoulder again, and it’s like a shock goes through him. It’s been years since the last time he felt their ghost drift connection, but there’s something there now. It’s not, though, the familiar sensation of how Newt’s mind used to feel. It’s like plunging into icy water, or maybe plunging into empty air.

During the war, Hermann had once complained to Tendo about his and Newt’s latest conflict for nearly half an hour before Tendo had cut in with, “You know, Dr. Gottlieb, there’s a saying about how the opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference.”

That’s what this is, he realizes, what Newton feels towards him now. Indifference.

Newton walks away in search of the bride and groom, and Hermann grips the glass in his hand hard enough to hurt.

“Let’s get some more drinks,” Tendo says heavily.

They get some more drinks, and then another round after that, and it’s not long before Hermann’s head is buzzing enough that he isn’t quite keeping his internal monologue on the inside.

“I hate her,” he tells Tendo conversationally. “Is that wrong of me? Alice, whoever she is. I _hate_ her.”

“I get that,” Tendo says, and Hermann drains the rest of his glass.

“Honestly,” Hermann says, and he brandishes his index finger at Tendo as though he’s giving a lecture. “Honestly, what makes him think he has the _right_ to, to talk to me about her? Doesn’t he have any sense of _decency_?”

He’s aware of his voice raising, slightly, but he feels completely justified in that. “I should go tell him that, he should hear that,” he decides, and starts to get to his feet, but he wobbles a little and loses his grip on his cane.

“Alright, I think it’s time to go,” Tendo says hastily, and he takes Hermann firmly by the arm and starts to direct him toward the door.

“It isn’t supposed to be like this,” Hermann says miserably as Tendo shepherds him out of the banquet hall as quickly as he can. “Why would he want to be so, so…” He flounders for a moment, almost losing his balance as he unwisely attempts to gesture with both hands. “So _ordinary_?”

Tendo sighs, steering him through the back door of the hotel’s lobby and out into the garden. “Let’s just take a break here, Hermann.”

“Hmph.” Hermann sits down heavily on the park bench Tendo has pointed him towards. “You know what they’re going to say? About him?”

Tendo, sitting down next to him, looks confused, and Hermann is vaguely annoyed by his lack of understanding of this clear and obvious situation. “They’re going to say that Dr. Newton Geiszler accomplished quite a bit in his early years, really could have been one of the greats, but then he had to go and have some kind of awful cliche midlife crisis and become a sort of knockoff Silicon Valley sociopath and it was only Dr. Gottlieb who managed to achieve any kind of—“

He’s starting to lose his words, and Tendo definitely notices it, peering at him with concerned eyebrows raising. “Of, of _real_ genius,” Hermann finishes.

“Yeah. You’re probably right.” Tendo pats him gently on the knee, and it feels terribly patronizing. Hermann feels sick.

If he’s being honest with himself, really honest, he did think he and Newt would get married someday. Probably when they were older, when insurance or hospital visitation became an issue, when they could avoid inviting their families and having to make some public pronunciation, but — on some level, he had expected it.

Once, Newt had tried to persuade him into going to the “mixer” at the end of some conference, some tedious event involving terrible music and awkward attempts at dancing. “Come on,” Newt had cajoled, “don’t you wanna dance with me?”

Hermann had rolled his eyes. “I don’t dance. And I know you can’t either, we’d look ridiculous.”

But eventually he’d been talked into the compromise of dancing alone in their hotel room, swaying with limited coordination and even more limited movement to a Viennese waltz playing from Newt’s phone. “Just lean on me,” Newt had said, “I’ve got you.” And he had, letting Newt hold him up. They probably had looked ridiculous.

At the end of the waltz, another song had immediately started playing from Newt’s phone, and it took Hermann a moment to realize — “Is this Avril Lavigne?”

Newt had laughed hysterically at that, spinning them in a full circle. “You knew who it was! Oh my god, Hermann, this is gonna be our wedding song.”

He slumps down further on the bench next to Tendo, now, trying to steady himself and fight off the sudden nausea.

“You all right?” Tendo says.

Hermann closes his eyes. “Yes, yes,” he says. “I’m fine.”

***

In the aftermath of the kaiju war, the world has gotten very good at predicting volcanic eruptions. Marshal Warren announces at an early-morning staff meeting that there is a major one on the horizon, scheduled to erupt in a week off the cost of Fiji.

It’s immediately obvious, when Hermann arrives as summoned to Warren’s meeting room, that he and Mako are the only ones who have been invited, and that means whatever is about to be said is going to go very, very badly.

“We’re going to need a strategy for this, Dr. Gottlieb,” he says, and Hermann doesn’t have one.

“Pardon me, Marshal,” Mako says, “but what exactly are we expecting to happen?”

Warren glares at her in a way that definitely does not respect the fact that Mako technically outranks him. “We’re looking for a way to ensure the breach doesn’t reopen, Secretary General. I was told our physicist here could provide me with that information.”

Hermann tries to hold himself steady as he puts on his glasses, tries to hold himself with a modicum of dignity he doesn’t feel. “There are plenty of ways to offset the possibility of a breach opening, Marshal,” he says. “Unfortunately, all the ones that we know of would destroy the planet.”

Warren’s gaze isn’t sympathetic. “What about nuclear bombs?”

There’s a slight gasp from Mako, and Hermann is definitely not hiding his panic now. “What about — what?”

“Bombs, Dr. Gottlieb. That’s how Marshal Pentecost closed the breach, isn’t it? Now again — I leave the science in your capable hands. But I think I’m correct in saying that a nuclear detonation on the other side of the world, a controlled one, you understand, orchestrated to minimize casualties, that could negate the effects of the volcano — wouldn’t it?”

Hermann gives up on standing on his own, clutching at the arm of the nearest chair and then lowering himself into it as Warren continues to stare at him. “The antipodal location from Fiji, that would be — that would be on the African continent,” he says, almost to himself. “You’re talking about Mali, it’s a populated region, it’s…”

Warren raises an eyebrow at him. “War has casualties, Dr. Gottlieb,” he says. “Casualties are almost always preferable to worldwide panic.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“It’s a solution,” Warren says, and his voice is low and dangerous. “I don’t see anyone else here coming up with one.”

Hermann looks over at Mako, but she doesn’t meet his eyes. Instead she walks forward towards Warren’s desk, her arms crossed across her chest. “Alright,” she says flatly. “Marshal James Warren, as the Secretary General of the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps, I am relieving you of your command.”

Warren actually _laughs_ at her. “Ms. Mori, I would really encourage you to think twice about that. You have no other assets here, no one else who’s qualified for a command position. I’m all you’ve got.”

Mako takes another step forward, looming over his desk. “My position is the highest rank in the corps. This _is_ a command position. And as your commander, I am discharging you from the PPDC.” She reaches across Warren’s hand to push the intercom button. “Rangers Pentecost and Lambert to the conference room, please? I need someone escorted off the premises.”

Turning her back on Warren, Mako gives Hermann a satisfied smile.

Warren’s face is red and screwed up in anger. “You don’t have a plan,” he says. “You don’t have anything else.”

But that isn’t entirely true.

The kaiju are clones. That was Newt’s breakthrough, his revelation that made everything fall into place. And they weren’t just clones; they were manufactured, facsimiles of beings with purpose and intention, ruled by the imposed will of the precursors.

Hermann knows that; he knows better than anyone, with one exception, about the cold, blank mindscape of a kaiju, about what makes them what they are.

So if the breach reopens, there’s one solution, one thing they can do to win without a massive loss of human life. Impose a different will.

Hermann stands up. “I have a plan,” he says. And then, in the face of Mako’s surprised look, he adds, “It might not work.”

Mako sighs as Jake and Lambert burst through the door and Warren begins sputtering at them. “You could have sold that better, Dr. Gottlieb,” she says, “but let’s hear it.”

***

_2032_

Every new year means another round of budget cuts, and this is the year that they slash the budget of the PPDC Research and Development Division to the bone, which means finally closing the Los Angeles lab.

It’s a familiar pattern, the competition nipping at the heels of the PPDC. Last time, it was his father; this time, it’s Newton. And everyone agrees that in comparison to their private sector competitors, the PPDC are hopelessly outdated.

Hermann sells the apartment, finally, which is a bit of a blessing. He puts most of Newt’s things in storage, but there are a few he takes with him. The little kaiju figurines, for one. There’s something about that particular reminder that he likes. No matter what else had happened, they’d closed breach and defeated the kaiju, reduced the things which were once earth’s greatest nightmare to kitschy collectibles. It was more, really, than anyone could hope to achieve in a lifetime.

It isn’t enough.

The transfer to Molyun isn’t expected, or requested; Hermann had told the corps they could send him wherever they needed him.

He could leave at any time now, without anyone who needs a steady flow of kaiju body parts tying him to the organization. But even on the PPDC’s worst days, he feels an obligation to the corps that he can’t quite explain, considering he’s given them the best research years of his life for very little in exchange.

He supposes they might need him again, urgently, and if they did, there probably wouldn’t be time for much advance notice.

Marshal Quan gives Hermann a tour of the Molyun Shatterdome, which is not dissimilar to any other shatterdome Hermann has ever been in. The quarters are cramped and the lab staff is sparse. It’s almost comforting.

“Everything should be fairly accessible,” Quan says, “but do let us know if there’s anything we can do to make you more comfortable. And if there’s any staff from the L.A. location you’d like us to reassign here—“

“No need for that, I can manage perfectly well.” Hermann surveys the lab supplies, which have clearly been set up by someone who studied his preferences; there are ample chalkboards and an impressive supply of chalk. “I will require access to kaiju materials, of course. Blood, specifically. I believe there’s a great deal in cold storage since we lost most of our biology department.”

Quan looks confused. “I didn’t know your work would require any kaiju blood.”

Hermann sets down his briefcase on the nearest counter and begins going through the drawers of the lab, mentally inventorying the supplies. “My colleagues who have departed for the private sector left behind a considerable amount of unfinished work that is owned by the corps. I’m perfectly capable of finishing it myself, and if we have any hope of remaining in business as an organization, I’ll have to.” He looks back at up at Quan. “I’ll need a bit more in the way of safety equipment as well. Hazardous chemicals, you know.”

Quan gives him that familiar look of mystification. “I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” he says. “I’ll see what I can do.”

After he leaves, Hermann stands alone in the lab for a while, surveying his domain. It’s not bad, he thinks. It’s just — quiet.

He’ll adjust.

***

 _Der Spiegel_ , published March 1, 2035

“Kaiju cult declares Newton Geiszler ‘precursor emissary’”

At a press conference Feb. 28, the leader of kaiju-venerating religious movement the Last Church of Human Extinction announced the church will now venerate alleged Tokyo attacker Newton Geiszler as its messiah.

Geiszler, a German-born American citizen, was accused by former employer Shao Industries of perpetrating the recent kaiju attack on Tokyo using the company’s resources. Founder Liwen Shao told China’s _Global Times_ Geiszler was aiming to “annihilate the species”.

In response, the Last Church’s controversial founder Kim Knight announced her support for Geiszler.

“Dr. Geiszler understands that humanity has had its chance with the planet and failed,” Knight said outside the church’s New York City location. “He has been chosen as the earthly emissary of the precursors and we will do whatever we can to support him and advocate for his freedom.”

Since the attacks, the heads of state in several countries, including Japan and China, have called for Geiszler to be tried for war crimes.

PPDC Secretary General Mako Mori said the matter is still being handled internally.

***  
_2033_

Raleigh’s injury isn’t exactly unexpected. Hermann can scarcely stand to listen to the news, most of the time, but he knows enough to know jaeger technology in the hands of nations outside the PPDC alliance is dangerous and increasingly common, and jaeger tech in the hands of the world’s many violent ideologues even more so. Raleigh’s last mission ends in a double amputation and a series of frantic phone calls to the k-science lab from Mako Mori.  
  
Hermann isn’t an engineer, but he has remnants of a degree in the field in his subconscious. He’s been working on other applications for the neural drift technology for a while, and Raleigh is a willing test subject.  
  
He flexes the joints of his new legs in Hermann’s lab, and looks uncomfortable. “I think I’m adjusting,” he says. “It’s less effort to maintain the connection. That’s good, right?”  
  
“The idea was that the drift connection should interrupt the mental process of phantom pain,” Hermann says. “But you’re still experiencing that.”  
  
Raleigh shrugs. “Not as often. I’m not taking medication anymore.”  
  
And doesn’t that sound like an unimaginable luxury — to slice away injured flesh and replace it with something that works better, works well enough for pain to be a less than constant proposition.  
  
Raleigh looks miserable. “You’re sure I couldn’t pilot again, though?”  
  
This isn’t a question Hermann was expecting. Medical sent over Raleigh’s neural scans while operating the prosthetics, and there’s not nearly enough mental processing power left over to pilot a jaeger.  
  
“I think you have more than earned a retirement from active duty, Ranger,” Hermann says.  
  
Raleigh frowns, drumming his fingers nervously against his knee. “It’s not even that, it’s just—“ He sighs. “I’ve gotten used to drifting with Mako. What if we stop and I never know what she’s thinking anymore?”  
  
Hermann flinches, and tries to cover it by turning halfway away from him and reshuffling some of the papers on his desk. “Of course all the evidence is anecdotal,” he says, “but experience suggests some degree of drift bleed is likely to persist for, well, an unlimited period of time. Particularly in physical proximity.”  
  
“That’s good to know, I guess,” Raleigh says.  
  
“And you’d prefer that the connection persist?”  
  
“Well, yeah. I love Mako, I love knowing how she feels.” Raleigh hesitates, but unfortunately isn’t the type to censor himself. “Do you still get it at all? The drift bleed?”  
  
Hermann tries to look as busy as possible with his papers. “Occasionally,” he says. “Altered thought patterns, sometimes. Shared memories. Of course, it’s only been a few years. It could fade entirely.”  
  
He doesn’t say that he often hopes, irrationally, that it will never entirely fade.  
  
“I guess that’s a good thing,” Raleigh says. “I mean... in some cases.”  
  
“Certainly.” Hermann offers him a faint smile. “In any case, I have no doubt the corps would make an exception to the non-combat drifting rules for the two of you.”  
  
Raleigh nods vaguely, and Hermann feels a stab of painful sympathy.  
  
“You know her very well,” he says. “Without the drift, you will still know her very well. The success or failure of a relationship does not depend on the strength of one’s telepathic connection, Ranger Becket. I have no doubt yours will survive this difficult period.”  
  
Raleigh nods, and Hermann’s pager buzzes. “Dr. Gottlieb? Request for you in the biology lab.”  
  
“I should get to that,” he says with another apologetic smile at Raleigh. “Please let me know if you experience any complications.”  
  
Half-seriously, Raleigh salutes.

***

There’s no real way to forewarn Newt, because it would mean forewarning the precursors as well. So Hermann just has to believe that their first drift in ten years will go well. It’s essential that he believe that.

So there’s no warning when he walks into the secure cell accompanied by half of the J-tech division, carrying drift equipment with them.

Newt’s body stiffens in shock, then begins thrashing wildly as the J-techs attempt to secure the pons helmet to his temples. “Please be careful,” Hermann says. “Don’t hurt him.”

When their task is complete, the techs file back out, looking disconcerted. Hermann walks to the chair across from him, arranges the neural technology on his temples and rolls up his sleeves.

“What the hell are you doing?” Newt’s voice bellows at him.

“I’m sorry to have to do this this way,” Hermann says, and the equipment is switched on.

_Initiating neural handshake._

It feels more like capturing a neural hand in his own that’s struggling to get away, but he can feel both of their presences in his mind at once. There’s the cold, sharp mental presence of “Alice,” immediately trying to push him out. But beyond that, there’s something else, there’s _Newt,_ and he’s only thinking in wordless fear but Hermann would know his thoughts anywhere. It’s Newt’s mind that reaches back out to him, pulls him in.

Newt’s voice screams in rage, but Hermann hardly hears it. “There you are,” he says. “Just focus on me, now, hold on.”

Then, suddenly, he feels that other cold mental presence rushing to fill his mind, and his sensory input data goes all wrong. He’s not sitting in a chair in the shatterdome anymore, he’s—

He’s standing in some kind of blank white space, stretching empty and infinite around him. Hermann looks down at himself and sees his body, the clothing he was wearing and his cane included. He takes a few cautionary steps and the physics all seem to work. It’s as though he’s been transported bodily into the kaiju’s mind, and it’s terrifying, if not a little fascinating.

But it’s not what he’s here for.

So, he’s going to do the opposite of what the jaeger pilots are always told to do. He’s going to chase the rabbit.

“Newt,” he says aloud, or at least aloud in this space. “I need you to show me the first time, alright? The first time you drifted after the breach closed.”

It takes a moment and then — the scene shifts.

He looks around to see the familiar landscape of the Los Angeles PPDC lab, darkened at the end of the day, and Hermann knows instinctively that the time is nine years ago and the memory is Newt’s, not his own. And then he sees him — Newt, standing in the corner of the lab with his hand pressed to a glass tank that holds the kaiju brain. Alice.

“Hey, little buddy,” he hears that past version of Newt say. “What are you trying to tell me?” He cocks his head to the side as if he’s trying to hear a distant answer, and then he says, “You can’t talk to me this way, right? You need the drift.” He laughs then, and he says, “You promise you aren’t going to hurt me?”

“Newt,” Hermann says, and steps forward.

The past version of Newt startles, and takes a step backwards, eyes widening. That’s a good sign, Hermann thinks; he’s not in too deep.

“Whoa,” Newt says. “This isn’t right. You shouldn’t be here.”

“You’re right.” Hermann takes another step forward. “But I need you to do something for me, Newton. Tell me why you’re doing this. Reason it out.”

Newt blinks slowly, shaking his head. “I — it wants to tell me something,” he says. “I can feel it. I just need to know.” He bites his lip. “No such thing as too much knowledge, Hermann, right?”

Hermann wants to reach out and take him by the shoulder, maybe to shake him, but he doesn’t. He’s afraid of what will happen if he startles him too much and Newt sees him as a mental intruder.

“I need you to ask yourself,” Hermann says carefully, “does this feel like something you would do? You know it hurt you badly last time, you know we’ve closed the breach. Does this really logically follow? Think it out, Newt, simple logic, point A to point B.”

Newt looks back over at the kaiju brain’s tank and then slowly, slowly, back again at him. “I—“ he starts to say.

Then, abruptly, the scene changes again.

For an instant, Hermann feels like he’s being thrown backwards, and then he feels like he’s nowhere, like the first time they drifted and he was floating in a sea of his and Newt’s memories. Except that the other presence here doesn’t have any room for his: they’re pushed to the side, and they’re rushing through memories of Newt drifting with the brain.

He’s alone in the lab, staunching a nosebleed with a tissue while he asks it out loud a string of rapid-fire questions about the anteverse and getting answers back just as quickly, laughing out loud with delight.

He’s sitting up in bed next to Hermann’s sleeping form, scribbling notes to himself about what the precursors have told him, and it’s the greatest sense of focus he’s ever felt, like his head is clear and he can just _think_ for the first time in his life.

He’s on a plane to Shanghai and there’s something strange about this, he thinks, there’s something wrong with this, but he just can’t put his finger on what. It must be the flight, he decides; he’s never flown first class before.

He’s typing as quickly as he can into the internal systems of Shao Industries’ drones, and he knows exactly what to do, knows all the commands and the right things to say, and by now he doesn’t ever pause or hesitate, doesn’t get distracted or question his decisions, and it feels so good not to have to doubt himself and to know exactly what his life’s purpse is.

 _I should have known_ , Hermann thinks, guilt creeping around the edges of his consciousness, but no, he’s got to keep his emotions out of this. Like Marshal Pentecost said, bring nothing into the drift.

There are other memories. He sees them in brief snippets, as if the precursors are trying to flip past them but Newt’s mind isn’t quite allowing it. There’s Newt drinking until 4 a.m. in a Shanghai bar, downing glass after glass of wine and not managing to feel any better about the nameless and formless void in his chest. There’s Newt typing out an email to Hermann and deleting it, over and over again, locked in a loop for hours without seeming to realize he’s doing it. There’s Newt waking up abruptly from a nightmare and staring at himself in his bathroom mirror, transfixed, as blood spills from his eyes.

“What is it, Newt?” Hermann says out loud, really out loud this time. He can hear his too-loud voice echoing off the walls of the secure cell. “Why is this what you want? Who’s doing this to you? You know where it went wrong, Newt, listen to me. You are strong and brave and I know you can do this. You have to fight it.”

And he’s watching another memory play out, he’s seeing it in third person as Newt pins him to the wall in Shao’s laboratory and closes a hand around his throat, hears him say, “I’m not strong enough—“

“It’s not just you,” Hermann says. “You don’t have to do this alone anymore. You’ve got me.”

There’s another shift, then. Hermann’s vision goes black for a moment, and when it returns he’s back in that white space and there’s someone standing across from him. Newt, looking several years younger with ruffled hair and thick-framed glasses.

This must still be how he sees himself, Hermann realizes, and that must mean it’s really him.

“They’re going to kill you, dude,” Newt says urgently. “I can hear them thinking it. They’re thinking they need me but you’re disposable and if they can just get into your head they’ll, they’ll… You have to disconnect the drift, please, Hermann, I’m not worth it. I promise you I’m not.”

***

_2034_

Hermann doesn’t say anything at his father’s funeral.

There are plenty of speakers, plenty of eulogies: the German and British prime ministers both speak, and the obituaries make the front page of all the German newspapers. The family is represented by Dietrich, the oldest child, who makes a speech that sounds essentially like all the rest of them, a speech about scientific achievements and unwavering work ethic that smoothes out any complications in their their father’s legacy.

The family sits in the front row, shoulder to shoulder, each of their clothing pinned with a torn black ribbon, and none of them cry. That isn’t what the Gottlieb family does.

After they step forward to place the first shovelfuls of soil into the grave, Karla links her arm through Hermann’s and gives him a sad half-smile. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” she says.

“Mm,” Hermann replies. “One would’ve thought he’d at least remain alive until the corps finally let me go, powered simply by spite.”

She laughs a little, but it’s artificial. “I think he was proud of you, you know,” she says. “He told me once that all he wanted was for his children to be better than him. Of course, in context he was saying that I wasn’t, but. Everyone knew you were.”

Lars Gottlieb died suddenly, a death that didn’t leave anyone time to say goodbye and was widely attributed to years of stress and overwork. But even if it had been different, Hermann doesn’t know what he would’ve said to the man. It had been years since they’d spoken more than a few words at a stretch about anything but physics or robotics, and Hermann was accustomed to his father making what he thought were subtle digs in the press about whatever his son was currently working on

Still, Hermann had never quite managed to feel resentful of him — not even during the war, when his father was lobbying to shut down the program they’d built together. It was a privilege to be his son, to have been raised by people who would never have expected less than the best. It had made Hermann the person he was stubbornly proud of being.

Lars used to tell all of his children the philosophy he said had allowed generations of Gottliebs to survive. “The world has never truly accepted our people,” he’d say. “You cannot make the world change. You can only be twice as smart as the rest of the world.”

Hermann was nineteen and in basic training for the European Space Agency when he was injured, and after all the surgeries and doctors and diagnoses, the prognosis that he would never fully recover his ability to walk was shattering. His mother and siblings responded with sympathy, with the pity he would come to resent so deeply. But it was his father’s reaction that helped. He’d walked into Hermann’s hospital room and looked at him only with his usual appraising gaze. “You are lucky,” he’d said. “You are already three times as smart.”

“Are you staying for shiva, Hermann?” his mother asks him anxiously after the funeral. “I know your work in China is important, but so many people will expect to see you.”

“I’ll stay,” Hermann says. The prospect of seven days with his grim-faced family, shaking hands and accepting well wishes from a parade of virtual strangers, is not an exciting one. But she’s right; people will expect it.

He doesn’t add that it wasn’t exactly difficult to get a full week off from the PPDC. Essentially the only person who notices when less work is getting done in the k-science department is Hermann himself.

Sitting shiva for Lars Gottlieb feels like the handful of times Hermann has held book signings, not so much receiving visitors as providing a ceremonial form of validation. Hardly any of the visitors knew his father. Karla leaves on the second day, Dietrich and Bastien’s wives and children on the third, and then it’s only the four remaining Drs. Gottlieb, avoiding conversation as much as they can.

Newton shows up on the fifth day, wearing one of his sharp dark suits and flinching at four looks of cold distaste as he stumbles through the usual “So sorry to hear about his passing” and “he was a great man, it’s an honor to have met him”.

“Oh, I brought this for you,” Newton says with a bit of a flourish, presenting a bottle of wine to Hermann’s mother. “It’s a Johann Josef Prum 1971 Riesling, one of the best German wines. It’s not much, but. A bit of a gesture.”

He looks genuinely nervous, and Hermann despises him for it.

“Thank you, Dr. Geiszler,” Lana says with a thin, false smile. “I’m sure we will all enjoy that very much.”

Newton bounces a little on the heels of his feet, looking relieved. “Uh, Hermann?” he says. “Could I maybe talk to you alone for a little bit?"

Dietrich and Bastien give him identical sympathetic looks, and Hermann sighs. “Alright, then,” he sees. “We can speak in the garden, come along.”

Newton follows him out to the back garden, and Hermann turns to look at him sternly the moment the door closes behind them. “My mother doesn’t drink non-kosher wine, you know,” he says.

Newton winces. “Oh, shit. I’m so sorry, I forgot.”

“You would.” Hermann leans against the back porch railing and looks out at his mother’s neatly trimmed hedges. Newton comes up to stand beside him, and Hermann gives him a searching look. There’s something different about him since the last time they saw each at Mako and Raleigh’s wedding, something nervous and strange.

“So,” Newton says, not quite looking him in the eye, “how are you?”

Hermann laughs humorlessly. “How am I? Well, Newton, my father, who spent the past decade resenting me for preventing the annihilation of our species, is dead. I’m forty-five years old and I live alone on a military base, my life’s work has no staff and no funding, and in a matter of months the organization I’ve dedicated most of my adult life to will almost certainly be dissolved entirely. Not to mention I’m presently speaking to you. So I’m not doing well, Newton, thank you for asking.”

Newton sighs and takes off his stupid sunglasses, pressing a hand to his forehead the way he always used to when he had a migraine. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” he says.

“Oh, my apologies. Would you prefer Dr. Geiszler?”

“No, I’d prefer —“ Newton breaks off, as though stopping himself from completing the sentence. “I never meant for us to stop talking, you know.”

Hermann looks away from him and stares back out at the hedges. “Well. You’ve had plenty of time to call. I don’t know why you chose this moment to turn up, but I’m not in the mood for it, to be honest.”

“I don’t know why,” Newton says. His voice is small and almost sounds confused. “I just felt like I should be here.”

“You should have said something. I would’ve told you not to come.”

There’s a long moment of silence, and before Hermann can think of a sufficiently scathing way to tell him to leave, Newton puts a hand on his arm. Hermann flinches instantly and takes a step away, but — there’s the tiniest flicker of drift connection there, and it doesn’t feel the way it did last time. It’s a pang of something else entirely: of fear, Hermann thinks, bordering on desperation. And then it’s gone.

Newton looks at him, not with any visible fear but with clearly apparent sadness. “I really am sorry about your dad,” he says. “I — I’m just gonna say this and I’m sorry if you don’t wanna hear it — look, Molyun isn’t really that far from Shanghai. We’re doing contract negotiations with the PPDC, I’ll probably be around sometime soon. If you have time, would you just… have dinner with me? Just dinner. There’s a lot of stuff I wanna talk about.”

It’s not fair, Hermann thinks. It’s not fair that after _years_ , Newton saying these things can make him feel anything but anger, make him feel something akin to hope. He wonders if he’ll ever truly stop feeling like the twenty-four-year-old who waited so eagerly for Newton’s letters, pouring over his scribbled penmanship to ensure he understood the meaning of every word.

 _Fate_ is a ludicrous concept, but Hermann is an expert in the physics of the multiverse. If he were to make a graph of all possible universes, starting with the assumption that his and Newton’s early lives were unaltered, continuing through the first kaiju landfall in 2013, would any of them turn out differently? It had been inevitable at that moment that they would meet, would eventually work together, even if Hermann had never answered Newton’s first letter. And afterwards, he doubts anything he could have done differently would have spared him from this feeling. He’d fought it as hard and as long as he could, but it was a flaw hardwired into the human system, love.

He should want nothing to do with Newton now, he knows that. But he thinks of his father, of the very specific sadness of a final door closing on a relationship he’d done nothing to try to mend.

Their names will be printed together long after both of them are gone, he thinks: Geiszler and Gottlieb. When Hermann dies, Newton’s name will be in the first line of his obituary.

“What would you say about me at my funeral?” he asks, before he can think better of it, and Newton blinks at him.

“What? Are you _dying_ , man?”

“No, Newton, I’m not — never _mind,_ I don’t know why I would —“

“Wait.” Newton holds up a hand, cutting him off. “I’d say, uh, I’d say that you were the bravest person I ever met. Whatever happened, you’d just look at it like it was an inconvenience that was interrupting your afternoon tea.” He smiles at him a little, punches him lightly in the shoulder. “And you always believed the best about humanity. No matter how many times it let you down.”

“Nothing about equations, then?” Hermann says.

“I’d get there eventually.” He looks like he’s deciding again whether to say something he knows he shouldn’t, and losing the battle. “‘Make sure they put Sendov’s conjecture on your headstone so it can keep plaguing you in the afterlife.”

Hermann laughs, in spite of himself. “I’m much closer to proving it now.”

“I’m sure.” Newton smiles at him with soft eyes. He always looked so different without the glasses; Hermann used to associate it with waking up in the morning to see Newt still sleeping next to him, the faintest trace of Newt’s dreams still floating in his own subconscious.

“Oh, alright then,” Hermann says. “We’ll have dinner sometime, when you and your wretched company come breathing down my neck.”

But it’s months before Newt and and Shao Industries come to Molyun and when they see each other again, it’s like the flash of the Newt he remembers is gone entirely. And by the time Hermann understands the real reason, of course, it’s too late.

***

It scares Hermann much less than he would have expected to hear that the precursors want to kill him, specifically.

He has to fairly good track record against them, after all. He and the precursors are standing at two to zero, advantage Hermann Gottlieb.

“Don’t be absurd, Newton,” he says. “You’re worth all of it.”

Newt makes a broken sound, somewhere between a sigh and a bitten-off sob. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t, I can’t stop it.”

Hermann tries to take a step forward, but as he does it it’s like the space between them widens, and the distance is exactly the same as it was before. “We can stop it. Now, I need you to trust me, can you do that?”

Newt nods at him, eyes wide and scared.

“There’s a part of your mind that the precursors are controlling, and I mean that literally anatomically — I think you’ve been cut off from your left hemisphere. So here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to let me fight it off.”

“ _No_ ,” Newt says instantly, heatedly. “You don’t know how it feels, it’s, it blacks out your whole mind—“

“It took years for it to fully control you,” Hermann says. “It hasn’t had that kind of access to me. I know exactly what I’m doing. Now, please, let me do this for you.”

Newt doesn’t respond. Hermann can see the conflict in his eyes, but when he steps forward again, he does get closer. They’re within an arm’s length of one another now.

Their eyes meet, and here, in the drift, it doesn’t matter how many years it’s been. They know one another; they’ll always know.

“Alright, my man, alright,” Newt says, and he holds out his hand. “Let’s do this.”

Hermann reaches out, and the moment their hands touch, he falls.

He hits the floor of _something_ with an impact that feels physical and real, and grits his teeth against a searing pain in his knee. It’s only mental, he reminds himself, only the drift, but he still has to grip the nearest piece of furniture to haul himself painfully to his feet, unsteady and feeling close to collapsing again even when he manages to stand.

He’s in Newt’s apartment in Shanghai, he realizes as he looks around, or a facsimile of it, and across from him is the kaiju brain in its vivid green fluid, “Alice” written in bright red and hearts drawn across the glass.

“You’re not winning this round either,” Hermann tells it. “You can’t have him.”

The brain pulses sickeningly in its tank, but there’s something about it that’s mesmerizing, almost as though he’s seeing it from Newt’s point of view, as the one entity that’s always been his companion and protector.

Hermann’s lucky that only makes him hate the thing more.

“We’ll always have the advantage, you know,” Hermann tells it conversationally. “No matter how strong your mind is, there’s still only one of you. Humans, we’re not very impressive when there’s only one of us. But there’s never only one.”

As he says it, he feels the presence of its strange, alien thought patterns flutter through his mind and coalesce into words. _We could make you stronger, you know,_ it whispers in his head. _Strong enough to protect him. They’ll try to take him away from you, even if you succeed, and you’re weak. You know you are. But if you’d just join us, we could keep him safe_.

“I can manage that, thank you,” Hermann says aloud.

Gripping the edge of Newt’s desk, he staggers forward as close to the thing he can get, and then lets go. Summoning all the balance he doesn’t in reality possess, he swings his cane forward and shatters the glass.

In a secure cell in the Molyun Shatterdome, Hermann falls from his chair and collapses to the floor.

***

When he wakes up in the medical bay, he can hear Newt’s voice.

“What do you mean you don’t know if he’s gonna wake up?” Newt is demanding. “Don’t you people know anything about neural overload, _god_ , you realize you’re dealing with humanity’s fucking greatest asset here-“

Hermann coughs, and Newt’s voice stops.

Abruptly, the curtain surrounding his cot is pulled back, and there are two figures standing over him, a PPDC physician and —

“Dr. Geiszler!” the doctor snaps, attempting to wave him away from Hermann’s bedside while Hermann struggles into a sitting position, pushing himself up on his elbows. “Please, I need you to sit down—Dr. Gottlieb, please lie back so I can examine you.”

Newt’s eyes are red-rimmed and his shirt is half covered in blood, and he looks at Hermann like he can’t believe he’s real. “Holy shit,” Newt says in a cracked voice. “Hermann, it’s me! It worked!”

The ghost drift connection is there, Hermann realizes, right there at the forefront of his mind. It’s like it’s always been there, and he knows it’s true. They know.

“Doctor—“ the physician starts to say, but Newt just dodges out of her way and to the other side of Hermann’s bed.

“Oh, don’t, look after him,” Hermann says vaguely in her direction. Newt doesn’t look at all alright, he’s still much too thin and pale and he’s not wearing any glasses. “I feel fine, really.”

The doctor looks between the two of the them with a look of complete bewilderment and then takes a step back. “I'll just go and check your neural scans,” she says, resigned. “There are guards at the door, so don’t, um, leave.”

As soon as she’s out of sight, Newt grabs one of Hermann’s hands with both of his. He’s warm, Hermann thinks; it’s a pleasant surprise.

“That was,” Newt says, “a fucking stupid, reckless, idiotic thing to do, and just so you know I’m absolutely never going to forgive you for risking your life like that. Oh, _shit,_ you’re bleeding.”

He grabs a bunch of tissues from the bedside table and thrusts them at Hermann, who reluctantly holds them to his bloody nose.

He looks up at Newt with wonder, still trying to take in the reality of him standing there. “I can’t believe they let you see me,” he says.

Newt smiles, but it doesn’t really reach his eyes. “I kind of wouldn’t stop screaming at that Lambert kid after you passed out. Mako said she knew it had to be me because no one else could be that annoying. Also, they did a brain activity reading and it was, quote, human and normal, unquote.”

“Thank god for that,” Hermann says,

Newt takes his hand again, and Hermann feels a mental wave of sadness. “I’m serious,” he says. “The world needs you, Hermann, you shouldn’t have risked yourself for — for me.”

“You would have done the same for me.”

“Nobody else in the world could have done that,” Newt says, and he swipes at the tears gathering in his eyes with the back of his hand. “Nobody else would have, oh my god, I tried to k-kill you, I… Hermann, you saw what I…”

Hermann knows what he means. “Not you,” he says. “The precursors.”

He can feel the wave of emotion that Newt’s barely holding back, a sea of guilt and self-hatred in the back of his throat. He wants nothing more than to bandage all of those wounds, to keep Newt safe and preferably never let him out of his sight again.

“You really… you beat them,” Newt says, wonderingly. “I tried so hard at the end to fight them off, to do _something_ , how did you just…”

“It was a matter of understanding the neuroscience,” Hermann says. “And of it being your mind. I don’t think either of us could have done it alone.”

“I love you,” Newt says, and then looks like he immediately regrets it. “I mean—I shouldn’t say that. Don’t say anything back. I just… I never stopped.”

Hermann smiles a watery smile at him and impulsively seizes his hand, raises it to his lips, and kisses it. He’s still bleeding, but Newt looks away from him and mops at his eyes again. “Goddamnit,” he says. “You can’t do that, I am barely holding it together, dude. That could’ve killed me.”

“I’ll restrain myself,” Hermann manages. “But. You know how I feel.”

Newt laughs shakily and doesn’t let go of his hand. “We’re not done, are we,” he says. “We’re gonna have to do it again.”

“Yes,” Hermann admits. “I’m sorry, yes.”

For a moment, the only emotion he can feel from either of them is fear.

***

The problem with Hermann’s intervention in Newt’s drift connection with the precursors turns out to be that it works too well.

With the date of the volcanic eruption and its theoretical reopening of the breach looming over them, all the more likely now that the precursors’ plan A has been interrupted, they need information more than ever. And though Hermann hadn’t exactly meant to, he’d apparently broken off Newt’s tie to them so completely that they can’t find it in his mind, now.

They have a limited number of options. There are no kaiju brains left to drift with, Warren having apparently ordered the destruction of the ones left on Mount Fuji and in Newt’s apartment without consulting anyone else.

So they drift with each other, in hopes of accessing what they need without it overpowering them, twice a day for the next few days, and nothing works.

“I’m sorry,” Newt says again in the medical bay, with an IV in his wrist and an ice bag pressed to one eye. He’s apologized endlessly these past few days, far too often. “We should’ve done this differently, you could’ve waited, _fuck_ , I’m sorry.”

Hermann sighs. He’s mostly recovered from the effects of the initial drift, but he’s spending most of his time here anyway. He doesn’t like not having Newt within his range of vision.

“There’s really no need to go on apologizing. I don’t regret anything I’ve done.”

Newt pulls the ice pack off his face and looks at him with disbelief. “How can you say that?” he demands, voice strained. “You should hate me. How can you _not_ hate me?”

Hermann considers reaching out for Newt’s hand, but he can feel enough through their connection to tell that Newt would pull away. “I’ve tried it,” he says. “It doesn’t work.”

Newt can feel through the drift connection that he doesn’t entirely mean it, and Hermann can feel that he knows that and that it still hurts, more than it should, and of course Newt can then feel Hermann’s immediate pang of guilt.

“I’m sorry,” Newt says again, breaking into their feedback loop. “God, you really shouldn’t have to see any of my stupid brain.”

They probably have seen too much of each other’s minds now, because Hermann now knows too intimately what it’s like for an alien race to invade your mind and flood it with a parodic mimicry of love. He understands now the temptation of it, of becoming a part of a whole after a lifetime of isolation in one’s own mind.

And Newt certainly knows too intimately what the last six years of Hermann’s life were like, more mundane in their misery but no less humiliating for it.

“Don’t say that,” Hermann says quietly. “I missed it dreadfully, you know. The drift. You.”

“Yeah,” Newt mutters. He looks down at his wrist, at the IV piercing through the head of Yamarashi. “It wasn’t, uh. The same. Obviously.”

Hermann can feel him thinking about the tattoos, an irrational and desperate urge to scratch and tear at them until all the ink bleeds out.

After their first drift, he finally understood Newt’s tattoos and his fascination with the kaiju. If you made something like that part of who you were, it meant you _mattered_ , and there was nothing Newt had feared more in the pre-PPDC period of his life than leaving behind a world that would’ve been the same without him. And if you aestheticized them, made them small and kitschy or made them into art, then you never had to feel like the universe was bigger than what you could wrap your brain around.

He feels Newt’s revulsion for the things now just as intimately. He feels Newt relish the pain of a needle in his arm.

Newt had been taking the mood stabilizers the PPDC physicians prescribed him, the ones that hadn’t been in his Shanghai apartment, but Hermann knows it isn’t enough. The drift changes you, whether you like it or not. Permanently.

“You were right about them,” Newt says hollowly. “The tattoos. There’s a reason it was me and not you. I left a door open in my head, right? Kaiju groupie. You’d have to be sick to carve those things in your skin.”

“This isn’t your fault,” Hermann says sharply, and hopes the strength with which he means it will make a difference. “And it will not do anyone any good if you hurt yourself.”

There’s no change in Newt’s thoughts, the swirling darkness of them, and when he speaks again he just sounds resigned.

“You know, after we — after we save the world or whatever, I’m gonna have to like, turn myself in.”

Hermann leans forward in the chair he’s sitting in at Newt’s bedside. “Absolutely not,” he says.

“A hundred and thirty-two people died, Hermann!” Newt snaps, his voice raising. “You can’t act like that’s nothing!”

“In proportion to the number of lives you’ve saved—“

“Oh, shut up.” Newt fumbles on his bedside table for the plastic glasses he’s been prescribed, and accepts them ruefully when Hermann hands them over. “None of that means anything, I didn’t earn the right to kill a bunch of people by being good at science. Even if this breach thing somehow works, I don’t deserve to have any kind of, of normal life!”

“What about what I deserve?” Hermann half-shouts at him. There’s ten years and two people’s worth of pent-up anger and guilt and terribly painful love battering against the inside of his head. “Do I deserve to lose you again?”

And part of him thinks that of course he does, because he didn’t protect Newt from this, didn’t prevent him from being this hurt and from hurting other people, and Newt can feel that too. Hermann feels his mind shift from self-loathing to sharp concern almost instantly.

“Hermann,” Newt says, “can you take the IV out of my arm?”

“No. You need vitamins, you’re terribly malnourished.”

“Then just come over here, at least,” Newt says, voice tense with frustration. So Hermann does, because he couldn’t deny him anything right now, and sits awkwardly on the side of the bed. Newt wrenches him forward with his free hand until Hermann falls a little and his head is resting on Newt’s shoulder. Newt wraps his arm around Hermann’s shoulders and holds on tight, and Hermann can feel a fierce protectiveness that should really be flowing the other way between them.

He presses his lips to Hermann’s cheek, clumsy but sincere, and they can’t do this now, not when the world could fall apart again at any moment. But it feels like a promise, a little. Like a vow.

“It’s okay,” Newt says, like he’s trying to convince both of them. “We’re here, we’re okay.”

So Hermann twists just a little, enough to press their mouths together for the briefest instant. The moment he does it blurs out a bit of the anxiety woven between them, and Newt makes a noise like he’s been shocked and looks at him with wide eyes.

“Just in case,” Hermann mutters. In case of what he doesn’t have to say. After a moment he adds, “If the breach reopens, that’s when we’ll have to do it. Sever the link for good.”

It could kill them both. It could do much worse than that. He doesn’t say it.

“It’ll work,” Newt says. “No other option, right?”

They sit there in silence for a moment, both of them deep in thought, and then it comes to them simultaneously as a flash of insight that is the pure product of two minds.

“Oh,” Newt says. “We got it.”

***

Amongst the pilots, Raleigh is the one who stays behind at the shatterdome to coordinate their operations.

They’ve got the entire staff of cadets piloting Shao drones, with Mako and Jake heading the fleet from Gipsy Avenger. Nathan Lambert’s injury from the previous fight hasn’t healed well enough to fight again, so while Raleigh is on the radio with the pilots, Lambert is on what can only be termed Newt and Hermann supervisory duty.

He could be doing a better job of it — he keeps running off every few minutes to the comms room to check on Jake, but Hermann can sympathize.

They’re still in the medical bay, with a few attendant physicians watching from a distance in case something terrible goes wrong. The j-techs have already hooked up the drift equipment, and Hermann feels oddly like they’re weapons waiting to be used. He supposes it isn’t inaccurate.

“So,” Newt says. “We’re just waiting for it to happen, huh? They could’ve given us a video feed of Fiji.”

“They’ll give us a signal,” Hermann says, although he knows it’s just a complaint for the sake of complaining.

Hermann has started to actually hope that the breach will reopen, which feels insane, but if doesn’t, this will all be for nothing, and they could spend years waiting for the next time.

“Hermann,” Newt says a moment later, anxiously. “If I start to — if I start to lose it again, you’re gonna have to pull me out of it, okay? You’ll be able to tell, and I might not be able to stop it, so you have to just…”

“I know,” Hermann says quickly. “I won’t let that happen.”

He remembers the excitement in Newt’s eyes ten years ago, when Hermann had first offered to share the drift with him. Newt, with his hair in disarray and his face glowing with surprised happiness, couldn’t have looked more different then than he does now, with dark circles under his eyes and a look of resignation, bleeding slightly from chewing on his lower lip. But Hermann had looked at him then and taken his hand and thought, _God, I love him_ , and he thinks the same now.

If that isn’t enough to save them, well, they’ve got science on their side as well.

Hermann knows the time of the predicted volcanic eruption, and he counts down the seconds in his head. A few minutes after that point, Lambert walks back through the door.

“It’s happening,” he says, his voice tight. “Let’s go.”

He flips on the drift equipment, and Hermann closes his eyes.

The feeling of Newt’s mind is familiar now; it’s only a bit more direct than the ghost drift that’s developed over the past days. He can hear Newt thinking now, though, and his thoughts are frantic. _If it doesn’t work, if we don’t find it, this is gonna go so so so wrong…_

He searches the mental space for anything foreign, but it’s Newt that notices it first, mentally reeling back away from it. _Don’t fucking touch me,_ he thinks.

“Newt,” Hermann says aloud. “Can you feel the presence of the kaiju? Ignore the precursors, just focus on them, on the blank space.”

“I’m trying,” Newt says, distantly. And there are the minds of the kaiju, those cold and echoing artificial formed brains. He can feel Newt release the tension and control he’s been holding onto, allowing himself to fall into the drift, and Hermann falls with him.

Then it all unfolds in front of them, from a dozen different perspectives, eyes scanning from points across the landscape. There are so many kaiju, Hermann realizes with a shock; there’s no reservation or hesitation this time. They’re throwing everything they have at them.

They can see everything, through the drift. Hermann’s been inside a kaiju’s mind before, but not like this, not when they’re attacking. He feels it when the jaws of one of the beasts snaps down on the arm of a jaeger like he’s doing it himself, the sharp taste of metal and clash of teeth.

 _Hey,_ he hears Newt think with pointed determination, _you don’t have to do this, you know._

The kaiju move together in a wave, surrounding the humans in their fragile machines. It’s a secondhand and distant thought, but Hermann can feel what must be the precursors’ glee, their revelry in this destruction.

He clings to his disgust at that feeling like it’s a life raft that is the only thing preventing him from drowning.

It’s then that the kaiju eyes he’s seeing through catch sight of something about them, and he’s watching from a few different points as helicopters soar into view and drop their cargo into the ocean.

The programmers, as Newt called them, were quite the innovation at Shao Industries. They were another step in the process of automation, like nanobots writ large; they could be used for medicine and industry and even to rewrite the genetic code of an organism, changing three kaiju into one.

They could be used for just about anything, if you knew the right equations.

So much of life can be reduced to equations, even this. The kaiju’s minds are reducible to numbers, and those can be rewritten in a way that changes their mental structure to mimic that of an autonomous organism rather than a remotely controlled tool.

Hermann feels the kaiju’s rage as the programmers crawl over their scales, and their jaws snap down on a few of them, but it hardly matters. The programmers crawl in through their ears and noses to reach their brains, and the restructuring process begins.

The agony of it, even carried down through layers of mental connection, is like nothing Hermann has ever felt before.

The searing pain distracts the kaiju for a moment, allowing the jaegers to get in a few more attacks.

It districts Newt and Hermann too, though, and it takes them a moment to fight back up to the surface. The minds of the kaiju are being changed, but they have to replace the presence of the precursors with something.

Hermann scrambles for something to say to the echoing vacant minds that are joined with his own, but he can think of nothing. The kaiju — fourteen of them on this side of the breach, now, and still under attack — feel only confusion, and confusion makes them strike at the closest targets.

It’s terrifying. But as deeply as he feels his own fear of the things, Hermann can feel Newt’s understanding of them. Empathy, really.

 _They’re listening, Newt_ , he thinks. _You can help them._

 _You don’t have to be this_ , Newt thinks. Hermann can feel Newt’s feelings rush over him suddenly, and he’s shockingly calm. He believes in this, Hermann realizes, believes completely that what they’re trying to do is possible, and the realization makes his heart swell with pride.

_You don’t have to be what they decided you should be. You have options! Look at yourselves, you’re beautiful and you’re in this beautiful world and you’re just gonna let them use you to destroy it? Look at this, look at everything there is!_

Hermann feels it as a kaiju lifts Gipsy Avenger in its jaws. He hears, distantly, the pilots’ screams through the communicators.

And then the kaiju drops them, and Mako and Jake manage a perfect flip and land on their feet.

The programmers are still scrambling through the water around the battle, and then they’re through the breach. Hermann can feel Newt’s intense triumph. _Taste of your own medicine,_ they think in unison. _See how you like that._

Somewhere echoing in their minds, the precursors scream in rage, but it’s distant and distorted and hardly important, now.

Another group of the programmers turn their attention to the breach itself; they’re putting Hermann’s theories and Newt’s invention into action, rewriting the physics of the dimensional tear itself to seal it back together, and it looks like nothing more than strange bugs stitching away at midair.

On both sides of the divide between the universes, the programmers change the structure of dimensions just enough to shift the two worlds out of sync with each other in spacetime. If Hermann’s equations are right, it should separate them permanently, altering each of their orbits through the vastness of the multiverse so the divide between them can’t be crossed.

The programmers make short work of closing the breach, and there are distant cries of triumph from the jaeger pilots. It’s an impossible victory for physics. But through the eyes of the kaiju, Hermann hardly sees it.

 _Just let it break_ , Newt thinks, and the kaiju understand what he means. _Let them go. You’re free now_.

Of all the things Hermann has ever felt through the drift, the most overwhelming is the feeling of fourteen entities attaining self-awareness, all at once.

He knows instinctively that Newt is too far into the drift to resurface now, so he anchors himself in his own body as much as he can and manages to say, “Lambert, they’ve stopped attacking, call off the jaegers!”

He hears only the distant sound of Lambert shouting over the comms to Raleigh before he slips back down.

The kaiju are thinking now, almost but not quite in unison and almost but not quite in language. They look around at their surroundings, at the jaegers clustered around them and the crashing ocean waves.

Then their thoughts turn inward, and they _notice_ , sensing the presence of Hermann and Newt where once there had been only the precursors. And their thoughts do form a question, or an approximation of one. _Why are we here?_ they ask. _What is our task? Why shouldn’t we destroy this?_

Newt’s thoughts are so strong now, so vivid. He thinks of everything about the world that’s worth saving all at once, of music and art and cities built on the remnants of destruction, the scientific method and all the forms of life from cellular to giant squid. And he thinks of humanity, and with that there’s a wave of that familiar warmth, that love Hermann recognizes from their first drift, and he realizes Newt is thinking of him.

The feeling echoes between them, multiplies until it’s large enough to fill all the empty space in the kaiju’s minds.

 _This is worth saving,_ Newt thinks. _You can be part of this world, you can be something new._

There’s a long moment of stillness, figures in the shallow ocean water simply standing and staring at one another. The jaegers, a few of them mildly damaged, stand motionless across from the kaiju.

And then, without a sound, the kaiju all turn and dive into the water. They don’t know exactly where they’re going — they don’t know this world, except for what they’ve just seen in the drift — but they know that they want to see it.

There’s a voice back at the shatterdome, barely audible as deep as they are in the drift. “Gottlieb! Did it work? Where are they?”

Hermann’s too far under to know how to reply. All he feels is the brightness of the kaiju’s minds, new connections forming every second, and Newt’s triumphant, burning joy.

Abruptly, the drift connection is severed. There are still kaiju swimming through the back of his mind, his own emotions still barely separate from Newt’s, but he can see Lambert standing over them.

“Did it work?” Lambert says again, urgently.

“Yes,” Newt says, and Hermann realizes he’s not bleeding from the drift. He touches his own face and realizes he isn’t either.

“It worked?” Hermann says, half statement and half question.

“It worked!” Newt repeats. He throws off the drift helmet and springs to his feet. “Hermann, we did it, we actually broke the link!”

Hands slightly shaking, Hermann pulls off the drift gear, and doesn’t look away from Newt. “I believe we did,” he says. “Ranger Lambert, please tell Ranger Becket we can call off the jaegers. Permanently.”

“Got it,” Lambert says, sounding dazed, and runs out of the room.

Newt’s grinning at him, eyes bright with happiness. “We did it,” he says again. “You and me, we… we just taught the _kaiju_ about _love_ , dude!"

Hermann laughs shakily, and Newt’s leaning down over him, a hand tracing his jawline and a brilliant flash of longing between them. “Is that what happened,” Hermann says.

“Close enough,” Newt mutters, and he bends down just slightly, angles Hermann’s jaw up and closes the distance between them. It’s a long, slow kiss and everything, everything Hermann has wanted for all those endless years.

Newt looks at him afterwards with tears in his eyes, and Hermann can feel the slightest edge of worry in his thoughts. “Newt,” he says, grabbing onto his hand and holding it tight, “whatever happens, it’ll be alright, you understand me? We’ll do it together.”

Newt nods and kisses him again, quickly, and then again when Hermann catches hold of his shirtsleeve and pulls him closer. “Good,” he says, “‘cause I’m not going anywhere. Not as long as you want me around.”

“I love you, too,” Hermann says quietly, in response to his unspoken thoughts.

Somewhere deep in the Pacific Ocean, it echoes through the minds of fourteen new creatures remade in their image.

It’s as good a foundation as any for a new consciousness, Hermann thinks. The kaiju aren’t meant for this world, and they won’t be accepted in it. But they’ll have this, and maybe it will keep them safe.

***

An excerpt from “Whoever fights monsters: Newton Geiszler’s private war”, _Vanity Fair,_ published April 2036

It is impossible to talk about Dr. Newt Geiszler without also talking about Dr. Hermann Gottlieb, who has become almost as controversial a figure as Geiszler himself.

Most observers agreed that it was Gottlieb’s testimony before the International Criminal Court (ICC) that spared Geiszler from a war crimes prosecution. Gottlieb’s narrative of Geiszler’s mind control by the precursor hivemind, struggle to reclaim his own psyche and ultimate contribution to the Kaiju Adaptation Event was — and to many, remains — persuasive.

Three months later, the long-rumored relationship between Geiszler and Gottlieb was confirmed when newspapers published their German marriage certificate, and another round of controversy began.

When I asked Gottlieb how he feels now about the ICC’s decision, his defense was as fierce as ever.

“I simply do not believe anyone should be defined by actions they could not control, when the rest of their life has been dedicated entirely to the opposite goal,” Gottlieb said. “I know Newt Geiszler better than anyone, and the person who carried out those attacks was not Newt Geiszler.”

This is the opinion shared by leading psychology and neuroscience experts who have examined Geiszler personally, including drift therapy pioneer Joyce Bryant. It is also the opinion of Mako Mori, Secretary General of the Pan-Pacific Conservation Corps (PPCC), Marshal Raleigh Becket and other high-ranking PPCC officials.

Still, it’s clear when talking to Geiszler himself that his understanding of the events is slightly more complex. Over the phone, he read me some of the emails he’s received over the past year. Many were vitriolic, but the ones he has the most trouble with, he said, are the ones that offer forgiveness from the family members of those killed in the Tokyo kaiju attack.

“I never know what to say to them,” Geiszler said. “Sometimes I just want to say that they shouldn’t forgive me, that I should have been strong enough to fight it off. I don’t want to take that anger away from them, if it helps them? But at the same time I think it might be better for them to be able to say they aren’t angry, that they don’t carry that around. I don’t know.”

There was a long pause after this response, but before I could ask another question, Geiszler added, “I always write them back, though. I figure I owe them that.”

***

_2037_

Hermann generally wakes up whenever Newt does, these days. Their drift connection is strong enough that Hermann can’t stay awake while Newt is thinking as loudly as he always does, and Newt’s internal clock seems to have been recalibrated not to need much sleep. He’d get by on about four hours of it during the Shao Industries days, and his body apparently hasn’t readjusted yet.

Still, five a.m. is an ungodly hour to be woken up by Newt thinking at him, especially on this particular day.

“G’morning,” Newt says with a sleepy smile as soon as Hermann opens his eyes and sees him staring, head propped up on one hand and eyes bright with excitement. “You know what day it is?”

His voice is slightly singsong, and Hermann groans. “Yes,” he mutters, half into his pillow. “You could’ve let me sleep in a _bit_ on our anniversary, dear.”

“Love you too, starshine,” Newt says, only half-sarcastically, and kisses him on the corner of his mouth. He’s beautiful in the early mornings, his hair all tousled from sleep, and Hermann is awake enough to tangle a hand in it and press him into another kiss.

“We’ve got all day for romance, Gottlieb,” Newt says after a few long moments. “We have an urgent appointment, remember?”

“Mmph,” Hermann manages, indistinctly. “Can’t you tell them to reschedule?”

“Hey, you swim halfway across the planet, you get there when you get there.” Newt kisses him on the nose and then springs out of bed with apparently boundless energy.

“Take your medication!” Hermann calls after him, and grins to himself at Newt’s indignant response of “You take yours!”

It’s difficult to believe that it’s already been a year. Hermann hadn’t exactly planned out the proposal; it was more of an impromptu question he’d blurted out weeks after the end of the tribunal on Newt’s case, when they were back in Berlin staying with Karla and doing nothing in particular. Newt was catching up on everything he’d missed on Netflix, loudly complaining about the newest Star Trek series, and Hermann had just sort of said it.

“Marry me.”

Newt had looked at him with sincere concern, but Hermann could feel everything else buried underneath it. “What?” he said blankly. “You don’t have to do that just because of, of all this.”

“That’s not why I want to,” Hermann said, and Newt quirked an eyebrow at him skeptically. “It isn’t! I simply don’t want to waste any more time not saying exactly how I feel.”

They couldn’t lie to each other when the drift bleed was that strong, and Newt could tell he meant it.

“Yeah, okay,” he said, reaching over to take Hermann’s hand and look, appraising, at his ring finger. “That sounds… really good. Let’s do that.”

They were married two days later, in a ceremony attended only by Karla, Newt’s father and a rabbi they’d managed to track down who didn’t keep up with the news (neither of them were religious, particularly, but it had seemed important to do it _properly_ , in keeping with tradition).

None of the last year has been easy — there’s been quite a bit of painful ghost drifting, Newt has been to six different therapists and hated all but one of them, and half of the world regards them as fugitives from justice while the other half is always calling to ask for the film rights to their lives. But it’s all been worth it.

They live on the coast of Peru now, in a small community mostly populated by environmentalists dedicated to rebuilding a once-destroyed city in concert with the local wildlife. Newt’s promised Hermann they’ll make it back to Germany eventually, or at least to somewhere that isn’t twenty degrees too warm for most of his wardrobe, but for now they need to be out of the public eye and near the ocean.

By the time Hermann makes it to the kitchen, Newt is halfway through his fieldwork routine, half a piece of toast in hand as he rummages through a folder and produces the appropriate charts.

“I meant it about doing the romantic stuff later,” he says, slightly guiltily, when Hermann walks in. “You know I love you and I couldn’t live without you and I can’t believe you married me, right?”

Hermann steals a slice of toast from his plate, attempting a scowl but unable to suppress a smile. “I am aware of that, yes.”

Newt moves aside a pint of ice cream in the freezer to reach a few vials of chemicals he’d synthesized for these days. “It is nice of the kids to come visit,” he says. “Well, one of ‘em, at least.”

Hermann laughs, pouring himself a cup of black coffee. “Which one of them is it?”

It took some persuading of various governments on Mako’s part for them to be allowed access to these chemicals. But the kaiju have inherited a considerable amount of their personalities from Newt and Hermann, after all, and they’re not terribly comfortable around most people. It’s one of the things they’re working on.

There are twelve kaiju left now, two of them killed by rogue militaries despite their attempts to stay out of sight in the oceans. Those had been difficult days.

But the right to exist of the remaining dozen is no longer in dispute. Newt says that their structure is a feat of perfect engineering; they don’t need to eat in any traditional way, they’re a self-sustaining closed system. They don’t even age, really, as far as Newt’s cellular studies can tell.

So the one thing they have to do to comply with the regulations set out by the PPCC is ensure that the kaiju don’t reproduce. They’re lucky their connection to the kaiju is strong enough that they allow it.

“It’s Spinoza,” Newt says. “You remember which one that is, yeah?”

“Of course. She’s the one with the spiraled horn on her head, because you can’t resist a terrible pun.”

“She’s named after your favorite philosopher!” Newt protests. He slings his bag full of field equipment over his shoulder.

Although it’s been more than a year, Hermann hasn’t stopped appreciating every visible reminder that Newt is _himself_ again. His longer and more untidy hair, the permanently smudged lenses of his glasses, the more rounded shape of his face, and the profoundly non-tailored ensemble of cargo shorts and a shirt with sleeves short enough to show off his tattoos — all of that is something to be thankful for.

“You’re staring,” Newt says with a slight smirk. “You ready to go or not?”

“It you insist,” Hermann says. He pulls a wide-brimmed hat from a hook beside the door — it’s important to take precautions against getting too much sun at their age, as he is constantly reminding Newt — and follows him outside.

The rocky coastline can be difficult to navigate, but the kaiju know to come far enough inland to meet them without coming too close to any of the city’s other inhabitants. It’s amazing what a telepathic connection can do.

When she catches sight of them, Spinoza makes a squawking noise like the world’s largest and most dissonant bird. She’s a Category Three, large enough to have once terrorized cities, with sharp teeth, eight legs and three eyes. But when Newt pats her happily on the closest foot, Spinoza actually wags her tail.

“Hey, Spin!” Newt says. “How’re you doing, buddy?”

Hermann watches Newt do his usual check-up, injecting the necessary chemicals between the kaiju’s toes, examining the scars left by the last battle with the jaegers and attaching a new tracking tag that will broadcast her location to Mako’s office, just in case. Hermann’s assigned job on these missions is mostly that of official photographer. He takes pictures of Spinoza from every angle for later reference, and a few just of Newt’s completely absorbed, peaceful face, for himself.

When Newt’s finished with his work, Spinoza knocks her head gently against each of them, a clumsy gesture of affection. It will never stop being surreal to be treated that way by the kaiju, but Hermann can still feel a connection to all of them, and the kaiju do care for them. The kaiju almost _are_ them, made into something sentient and feeling by a combination of his mind and Newt’s, and for that Hermann cares for them too.

“See you soon, kiddo,” Newt says affectionately, patting Spinoza on her deadly sharp horn. “Stay safe out there.”

The kaiju never stay for long, but they’ll have another visit in about a month, and this one will give Newt plenty of work to do in the intervening weeks.

Still, he looks a little wistfully after Spinoza as the kaiju turns back towards the sea.

“We did a good thing, didn’t we?” he says. “I wish we could’ve saved more of them, but. It’s something.”

“They are beautiful,” Hermann says, and takes Newt’s hand. “And there will be generations after us who will never know them as anything else.”

They stand there quietly together on the coast, watching Spinoza’s form wallow back into the ocean, but they’re there in the ocean as well, and they’re eleven other creatures throughout the Pacific, each of them joined but unique, existing now only for their own sake.

“Yeah,” Newt says, and he leans into Hermann’s side, solid and warm. “I think we did alright.”

  
  
  
  



End file.
